Wow! Such a good movie.

Very disappointed :(

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Bullhead is an extremely frustrating film. It sports an incredible performance by Matthias Schoenaerts as a lonely Belgian farmer struggling to cope with an emotionally isolated existence and haunted by an insurmountably troubled past. To say any more would be a total spoiler. As a piece of character drama, this is seriously affecting stuff, made all the more distressing by a truly world- class performance. This would have been enough for a terrific movie.However, the waters are muddied by various other superfluous plot strands; an investigation into the use of steroids in beef, local gangsters killing cops, low-rent hoodlums selling stolen tyres, a gay police informant who also happens to be a long-lost childhood friend, and a slightly implausible love interest. While any of these ideas may have borne fruit in their own movie, the result here is definitely less than the sum of its parts, not least because the aptly sombre tone of the main story is compromised by the intrusion of these other events.Michaël R. Roskam is definitely a director to watch, and I suspect Bullhead will become an interesting curiosity to visit in the context of a great director taking his first steps. Ultimately, the weakness here is in the writing. Roskam's next movie was 'The Drop' (with Matthias Schoenaerts again awesome in a supporting role), which was adapted from a short story by Dennis Lehane and, for my money, is an infinitely superior movie, largely because it doesn't suffer from the same cluttered over-plotting. Like Anton Corbijn , tone and emotion are clearly Roskam's forté and I for one am excited to see what he delivers next.Technical merits for the blu ray are first rate, and the 'making of' piece is watchable, if nothing special.

This film is the story of Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts), a Belgian cattle farmer who gets involved in illegal meat trading but after a federal agent gets killed a complex situation arises that eventually brings trouble to Jacky and his family. We see Jacky as a brutish and explosive character who continuously injects hormones and takes steroids. At the same time characters from Jacky's past resurface and introduce a parallel and intertwined back story that explains why Jacky is like he is.It is hard to explain the plot and why this film is so powerful without introducing spoilers and for this reason I have marked this review as containing spoilers but will try to keep to a minimum.Jacky is portrayed as a bullish brute who fits well into the dark underworld of mafia dealings etc. But as time passes we start to see the humanity within Jacky and feel sympathy for his character. This emerges as we see flashbacks to his childhood and an extremely horrifying event that shapes the man he becomes. Jacky is unable to claim the revenge that he so rightly deserves and unable to realise the love that is in his heart. Many situations demonstrate Jacky's suffering as an individual that are all as a result of this one event. We see Jacky as a sweet boy and we see Jacky as the tortured and brutish man and the links between the two slowly unfold.Schoenaerts portrayal of the complex character that is Jacky is magnificent and Oscar worthy. He does this with few words but with a power of presence and with expressions that reveal the character's underlying pain - he is a truly great actor. I have seen him do similar before in Rust and Bone but this role defines him as a great actor.The film starts slowly and the meat mafia characters are somewhat complicated to follow as they are introduced but stick with it as the film develops into a superb character study. This is not a Hollywood style film with loads of action but a very European film that values the importance of emotion and plot much more highly.There are scenes of violence and some that are quite disturbing, especially the event in Jacky's childhood is very hard to watch. What I am saying is that this is not a feel-good film but one that portrays gritty and sometimes brutal reality in a way that is rewarding for those that like to watch films that make them feel and think.This is one of the best films I have seen for a long time. It will not be to everybody's liking (those that can't do subtitles should avoid it - but you miss so much great cinema).I believe this is the first film from this director so I will be looking out for more. It certainly establishes Schoenaerts as a great actor and I hope to see much more of him and hope he is not snapped up by Hollywood to play dumb gangster roles, which he undoubtedly could do well and might pay him much more.So, in summary, this is a powerful and gritty drama from a new director with an astounding lead role which I cannot recommend highly enough - watch it! The only reason I do not give it 10 is some slowness and confusion in the early parts which prevent it from being perfect.

There are plenty of unsettling features of this simple tragic film, but all are treated with equanimity. Unless you are familiar with the Belgian hormone mafia, the first 20 minutes or so of this film winds up slowly until it is released. There are themes that remind me of Almodovar, but with the light sucked out. The secret of storytelling is what to leave out, and the decisions about what to leave to the viewer seem perfect. Time is spent on the emotions of a man rendered incapable of a normal outlet, and how the few people around him compensate. Matthias Schoenaerts as the protagonist is excellent, but this film owes everything to it's tight direction. (Language plays quite an important part in the film, and the audience is required to recognise the difference between the two Belgian languages.)

I found this film remarkable for its ability to stir feelings of sympathy for a kind of character who seems utterly brutish and unredeemable. Jacky is a brute, the kind of man who all too often resorts to abominable acts of violence when he's aroused. And yet, thanks to the portrait of Jacky drawn by the director and by the actor, we cannot help but feel great sorrow for him. Yes, Jacky does terrible, terrible things over the course of the film, but by the end I was sobbing for him. Maybe it's simply "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner", but whatever that emotion was I felt at the film's end it was something that revealed to me (and one would hope to all who see this film) a terrifying and redemptive bond of common humanity.