Hollywood’s villains were once Russian or Chinese. Now they’re us – people from the Balkans
I recently watched the new bro-flick Wolfs . In my defence: I was sick and therefore lacking in imagination. I didn’t fall for the Brad Pitt-George Clooney combo, though, doing proper bro stuff – walking around in leather jackets, driving cars (fast), cracking egomaniac quasi-ironic jokes. If it wasn’t for the portrayals of “Albanians” and “Croatians” and their rival mafias, I might have fallen asleep.
The Albanians enter the film as a bunch of hefty guys with guns; they’re done away with swiftly, in less than a minute. The Croatians, on the other hand, are presented more elaborately, in a longer scene of a Croatian wedding party.
Held in a kitschy club, the party features heavy drinking, lots of dark-haired smiling men in light-coloured suits, a short dialogue in Croatian between Zlatko Burić’s mafia boss character and his fictional daughter and lively string-based music. At a certain point the men in light coloured suits hug and begin to dance – jump – in a circle, while repeatedly yelling “hey hey hey”. The dance ends with one of the American bros cursing in Croatian, or something resembling Croatian.
The film is completely forgettable, yet it displays something as old as Hollywood itself and that should certainly not be overlooked. After Hollywood othered the Native Americans, African Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Mexicans, the Russians and others (pun intended) in........
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