4/5
Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers is a heavily plot-driven crime thriller, taking many of the familiar tropes and narrative techniques employed by the genre and working them into a thoroughly engaging wholly unique heist film. There’s a visceral pleasure to the film’s deadpan comedy and casual irony embedded in its many twists and turns. Chapter breaks provide an effective way to introduce the film’s numerous characters – especially as the plot gets more and more convoluted (in the best possible way). Corruption and paranoia seem to be a simple fact of life in Porumboiu’s Romania, with everyone under surveillance and everyone on the take. The only thing that separates the good from the bad is loyalty and compassion for another, which Porumboiu never sentimentalizes. Everything is played straight – the camerawork is simple, but elegant, both humor and emotions and presented with a slight distance and remove. With all of the twists and turns of the plot, character motivations do become a bit murky, but in the end it’s a thoroughly captivating thriller.
