Title: Kontroll
Year: 2003
Director: Nimrod Antal
Writers: Nimrod Antal
Stars: Sandor Csanyi, Zoltan Mucsi, Csaba Pindroch , Sandor Badar, Zsolt Nagy

The Story: A traumatized subway ticket inspector works the trains beneath Budapest, terrified to re-enter the surface world. In the meantime, he befriends his fellow antisocial inspectors, courts a girl in a bear suit, and tries to catch the hooded man who’s been pushing people onto the tracks.

Why It’s Great: This movie impressed Hollywood, who hired Antal away to make movies like the upcoming Predator reboot, but it didn’t break out in America the way it could have. The sort of American who enjoys high-energy action-thrillers like this one doesn’t want to read subtitles. Where is the great American subway action movie? The location provides so many atmospheric visuals: on the platform, inside the train, on the tracks, in the tunnels… So many opportunities for danger! This one shows us how to do it. This movie does a great job showing the psychological toll of living underground. It puts us in the shoes of the hero by making the subway system our whole world. By the end we’re as desperate for fresh air as he is. The fantastic documentary Dark Days, about the homeless tunnel-dwellers who live beneath New York, is the closest American equivalent to this movie.

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan…