Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival 2008

This fantastic film could have been an American Western. But it is in the East. Bosnia.Still, it has the mythic landscape, the essential characters, and the ultimate redemption of the soul through action that we have learned to love with our Gregory Pecks and Paul Newmans(sp). The cinematography is so perfect, so rich and evocative, that each frame could be an art photograph hanging in a gallery. The film begins with a pan shot, the fatal river behind silhouettes of defunct war instruments, then a malfunctioning overhead light blinking on and off in an upstairs room. The light reveals the human residue of war, the Bosnian war. A coat hanger of a man, thin and gaunt and dissolute. His burning cigarette is more alive than he. Could this man be absolved of the horror and degradation of war? Could he love again? The answer is yes.

His name is Mirko. He has a hacking cough, he is filthy, a heroin addict. His job is to ferry ,yes, like the mythic Charon, or Urshanabi, only Mirko ferries smuggled human Chinese cargo, the "melons", across the river Raba to Europe. He is paid not much by gross and unscrupulous gangsters. In the latest shipment is a beautiful Chinese girl with her family, too many for the size of the boat.Forced to fit them all in, the boat sinks. all die except the girl, saved by Mirko.

what ensues, punctuated by a haunting score, is watching how love can grow in the heart of a man shorn of decency and self respect; and likewise how a young immigrant girl can return that love in the most unlikely of situations. Just the two of them and his young engaging gypsy sidekick are pitted against the local mafia. They want the girl dead. Mirko uses the guile and and experience learned in battle . Crackerjack direction and flawless acting, plus wry characterization and vivid camerawork make the Melon Route a rare experience.
W. Rudman

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