The past few years have done a thorough job of demolishing much of what the international community once held dear. Among the casualties stands the increasingly battered reputation of international law. Where once institutions like the International Criminal Court and various war crimes tribunals carried at least the pretence of authority, they now find themselves openly scorned, mocked, and in some quarters actively threatened. The pattern has become depressingly familiar: these bodies are tolerated when they prosecute African warlords or Balkan strongmen, but the moment their gaze turns toward more powerful nations or inconvenient geopolitical interests, the howls of protest begin. Sanctions are threatened, funding is withheld, and arrest warrants are dismissed as irrelevant nuisances.
Yet rewind roughly two decades, and the picture looked rather different. Back then, international war crimes tribunals still commanded a certain respect—at least when their subjects hailed from the Third World or Europe's periphery. There was a smug confidence in Western capitals that such prosecutions served a dual purpose: delivering justice, certainly, but also functioning as a handy tool for bringing troublesome governments into line. The civilised, enlightened West could posture as moral arbiter over tribalistic barbarians, and few questions were asked about selective enforcement or the political motivations behind particular indictments.
Croatia found itself on the receiving end of this dynamic during its EU and NATO accession process. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) became a persistent obstacle, a price that had to be paid for entry into the club of respectable European nations. The resulting tensions, compromises, and national soul-searching provided fertile ground for artistic exploration—and it is here that we find the inspiration for Two Players from the Bench, a 2005 Croatian black comedy written and directed by Dejan Šorak.
The real-world events that animate Šorak's film centre on Ante Gotovina, a Croatian Army general whose biography reads like something dreamt up by a novelist with a taste for the picaresque. Foreign legionnaire, mercenary, businessman, and ultimately military commander, Gotovina had compiled a formidable record during the conflicts that consumed the former Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s. When the ICTY indicted him for crimes against ethnic Serb civilians in connection with Operation Storm—the 1995 offensive that effectively ended the war in Croatia—the reaction in his homeland was nothing short of volcanic. For a substantial portion, if not the majority, of the Croatian public, Gotovina was a hero, a defender of the nation against aggression. The notion that he might spend even a single night behind bars struck many as an unforgivable insult, a betrayal of the very sacrifices that had secured Croatian independence. The resulting political poison seeped into virtually every aspect of national life, with political parties staking out positions ranging from defiant resistance to grudging acceptance.
Gotovina spent years as a fugitive, his whereabouts the subject of endless speculation, before his spectacular arrest on the Canary Islands in December 2005. He would spend several years in the ICTY's detention centre at Scheveningen, was convicted, and then—following a successful appeal—dramatically acquitted and returned to Croatia as something approaching a national saint.
Two Players from the Bench arrived in cinemas while Gotovina was still at large, and it channels this fraught atmosphere through a fictional alter ego: Colonel Ivan Skoko. The film introduces us to two men who occupy radically different positions in relation to this elusive figure. For Ante Jukić (Goran Navojec), Skoko represents heroism incarnate—a military commander whose flight from Hague justice is a noble cause worth supporting. Jukić is himself a Croatian war veteran, carrying the physical and psychological scars of the conflict. For Duško Katran (Borko Perić), Skoko was something else entirely: a feared adversary.
These two men find themselves thrown together through the machinations of Antiša (Tarik Filipović), a mysterious Croatian government "fixer" whose job involves making awkward problems disappear. Antiša has discovered that Jukić and Katran bear striking resemblances to two witnesses whose testimony could exonerate Skoko and demolish the ICTY's case against him. The catch, of course, is that these witnesses have vanished. The solution? Jukić and Katran will impersonate them, learning their statements and mannerisms in preparation for a performance that could alter the course of international justice. The inducement is money—substantial amounts of it—but first comes the preparation. The two veterans are spirited away to an abandoned industrial facility, far from prying eyes, where they must immerse themselves in their roles.
What follows is a study in mutual antagonism slowly giving way to something more complicated. Ante and Duško begin as natural enemies, bound together only by circumstance and the prospect of payment. They are, after all, veterans of opposing armies, men who lost friends and family members to the other's side, who carry resentments that years of peace have done little to diminish. Yet as the days stretch into weeks in their industrial hideaway, something shifts. Shared circumstance breeds reluctant understanding. Both men begin to suspect, with good reason, that their employers view them as disposable assets—useful for the task at hand, but potentially dangerous liabilities once their performance is complete. The realisation that they might end up as collateral damage in a game far larger than themselves creates a bond of necessity. Escape begins to look appealing. So does the possibility of negotiating a better deal, of turning the tables on the fixers who imagine themselves puppet-masters.
Šorak approaches this grim material through the lens of black comedy, a choice that carries considerable risks when dealing with subject matter this raw. Remarkably, he pulls it off with far greater success than Danis Tanović managed in his Oscar-winning No Man's Land. Where Tanović's film often felt calculated for international consumption—its Bosnian setting rendered in broad strokes accessible to festival audiences unfamiliar with the region's complexities—Two Players from the Bench wears its local specificity as a badge of honour. Šorak assumes his audience knows the context, recognises the references, understands the satirical barbs directed at real events. There's even a sly nod to the Croatian edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?—a programme then hosted by none other than Tarik Filipović, casting his presence in the film in an additional meta-textual light.
More impressive still is Šorak's willingness to puncture Croatian nationalist pieties. At a time when much of the country's cultural output treated the "Homeland War" with reverential solemnity, Šorak adopted an unromantic, frankly cynical perspective. The fictional Skoko—who never actually appears on screen—may be innocent of the specific charges against him, but the film acknowledges uncomfortable truths that many Croatians preferred to ignore. The Croatian Army did commit atrocities. Someone, whether the right person or a convenient scapegoat, would eventually have to answer for them. Even more subversively, Šorak suggests that many of the war's celebrated military heroes were, in their civilian lives, thoroughly compromised figures—involved in petty criminality, corruption, and activities that sat awkwardly alongside their patriotic reputations.
Šorak attempts to insulate himself from predictable accusations of anti-Croatian bias by extending his critique across the ethnic divide. The post-war Bosnian Serb entity, as depicted through Duško's experiences, emerges as equally corrupt, equally morally compromised—a place where a man can be literally sold to his former enemies by his own people for the right price. Nobody emerges with clean hands.
The film's opening sections are its strongest. Šorak demonstrates genuine skill in introducing his characters and allowing them—and us—to gradually comprehend the bizarre situation in which they find themselves. These sequences achieve a rare alchemy, combining genuine suspense, sharp dialogue, and dark humour that emerges organically from circumstance rather than forced jokes. The industrial facility becomes a pressure cooker, its isolation amplifying every tension, every tentative moment of connection between the two veterans.
Unfortunately, the film loses considerable momentum in its middle section. Šorak seems uncertain how to develop his premise toward a satisfying conclusion, and the pacing suffers accordingly. The introduction of Stela (Dora Lipovčan), a Ukrainian woman trafficked to the West and apparently supplied to the facility to provide "entertainment" for the two men, feels like an unnecessary complication, an additional grim element that adds little to the central dynamic and contributes to the sense that the film has become somewhat overlong.
The final act, in which Ante and Duško attempt to outmanoeuvre both their government handlers and the ICTY itself, unfolds with a certain chaotic energy. It is not always easy to follow, and some viewers may find themselves struggling to track exactly who is double-crossing whom. Yet it delivers something approaching a happy ending—or at least the happiest ending that circumstances permit.
Two Players from the Bench is a flawed but genuinely brave piece of cinema. Its very existence represented a willingness to ask uncomfortable questions at a moment when such questioning was far from fashionable. For audiences outside Croatia and its immediate neighbours, the film demands considerable contextual knowledge; the jokes land more softly, the references require explanation, the full weight of its audacity may not be immediately apparent. Yet it stands as compelling evidence that even the darkest chapters of history can be illuminated through humour, provided the humour is wielded with sufficient intelligence and moral clarity. Šorak understood that comedy need not mean trivialisation, that laughter can be a weapon against complacency and denial. In an era when his country was still struggling to come to terms with its recent past, that made him something of a cinematic dissident. The film he produced is worth seeking out, both as a document of its moment and as a reminder that the best comedies often emerge from the most unlikely sources.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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