Kiler (eng subs) [1997] Juliusz Machulski

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Kiler (1997)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127626/

Kiler (The Hitman) is a highly successful 1997 Polish comedy by Juliusz Machulski, starring Cezary Pazura, Jerzy Stuhr, Janusz Rewinski and Malgorzata Kozuchowska. The movie is a story of a taxi driver named Jerzy (short: Jurek) Kiler who is mistaken for a notorious mercenary killer by the police as well as the mafia.

Cezary Pazura ... Jurek Kiler
Malgorzata Kozuchowska ... Ewa Szanska
Jerzy Stuhr ... Ryba
Janusz Rewinski ... Siara
Katarzyna Figura ... Rysia
Jan Englert ... Lipski
Krzysztof Kiersznowski ... Waski
Marek Kondrat ... Klonisz
Jan Machulski ... Police Inspector
Alex Murphy ... Hector Sosa
Slawomir Sulej ... Kudlaty
Piotr Wawrzynczak ... Iks
Slawomir Orzechowski ... Stranger
Szymon Majewski ... Mioduch
Pawel Delag ... Camera Operator


Seeing the movie's tremendous success in Poland, Hollywood quickly purchased the rights to the movie, with the intention to adapt it for the American market, with Machulski (the original director) as the executive producer. However, nothing of the sort has happened since.

Films produced in Poland in the nineties try to establish their identity as a part of European and world culture not only in terms of economics. Despite the growing number of co-productions with Western partners, the majority of Polish film production is still fully financed from domestic sources. Yet those films are more and more for export.

Kiler managed to gather popular cinema enthusiasts and art house audiences: it was both popular and rated very highly by most film critics. Yet it clearly defines itself as a non-serious, fun production.

At the very beginning we learn that Polish gangsters prepare a deal to sell the Palace of Culture, a famous Warsaw building presented by Soviets to our country, to some foreign investors. This abstract and impossible situation moves the story to a level that is later defined as intertextual.

Instead of relating the story to any experiences of the viewer, the director calls for his cinema competence. Kiler builds on clichés and admits it in many ways.

In one of the scenes Jurek Kiler, a taxi driver mistaken for a famous hit man, builds his image from popular films. After watching The Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese, Leon: The Professional by Luc Besson and a couple other films he poses like the protagonists of the movies that inspired him.

He also chooses one Polish film, Psy by Wladyslaw Pasikowski, an almost perfect copy of American action movies. Parodying the character created by one of his colleagues, Boguslaw Linda, with whom Cezary Pazura (Jurek Kiler in Machulski