Rival crews of ticket inspectors roam the underground hallways of the Budapest subway system, busting fare dodgers and chasing a shadowy subway killer while their leader and subterranean hero Bulcsu (Sandor Casanyi), covered in blood, runs from his own mysterious past and chases a pigtailed girl in a bear costume. Nimrod Antal's "Kontroll" is a terse, claustrophobic debut, rich in gritty characters and shocking incidents but short on explanation, rhyme, or reason.
Bulcsu's life—and the entirety of "Kontroll"—happens underground. He sleeps in abandoned subway stations, spends his days checking for tickets, eats and drinks whatever the vending machines offer, and for kicks, he runs on the train tracks. There seem to be reasons for his self-imprisonment, but the film never answers the questions it poses. A mysterious hooded figure is pushing people off the platforms to their death, and Bulcsu's coworkers are an outrageous, useless bunch of bruisers, lunatics, narcoleptics and drunks. Occasionally, one of them loses it and slits a ticketless rider's throat; owls appear in unlikely places, and every now and then, crowds of ravers take over the hallways to play the worst techno Europe has to offer.
Moodily photographed and invested with heavy symbolism that points nowhere in particular, "Kontroll" is best enjoyed as a slightly overlong trip into an odd, man-made corner of hell, a dreamlike exploration of urban alienation and despair. If Nimrod Antal set out to make a modern myth, a gender-reversed Orpheus, it appears that he almost succeeded. But by the time the pretty girl in the costume finally takes Bulcsu's hand and pulls him on the up escalator, the audience is ready for some daylight, too.
