An absolute waste of money

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Bullhead is an extremely frustrating film. It sports an incredible performance by Matthias Schoenaerts as a lonely Belgian farmer struggling to cope with an emotionally isolated existence and haunted by an insurmountably troubled past. To say any more would be a total spoiler. As a piece of character drama, this is seriously affecting stuff, made all the more distressing by a truly world- class performance. This would have been enough for a terrific movie.However, the waters are muddied by various other superfluous plot strands; an investigation into the use of steroids in beef, local gangsters killing cops, low-rent hoodlums selling stolen tyres, a gay police informant who also happens to be a long-lost childhood friend, and a slightly implausible love interest. While any of these ideas may have borne fruit in their own movie, the result here is definitely less than the sum of its parts, not least because the aptly sombre tone of the main story is compromised by the intrusion of these other events.Michaël R. Roskam is definitely a director to watch, and I suspect Bullhead will become an interesting curiosity to visit in the context of a great director taking his first steps. Ultimately, the weakness here is in the writing. Roskam's next movie was 'The Drop' (with Matthias Schoenaerts again awesome in a supporting role), which was adapted from a short story by Dennis Lehane and, for my money, is an infinitely superior movie, largely because it doesn't suffer from the same cluttered over-plotting. Like Anton Corbijn , tone and emotion are clearly Roskam's forté and I for one am excited to see what he delivers next.Technical merits for the blu ray are first rate, and the 'making of' piece is watchable, if nothing special.

It can be difficult to write this film a review without spoiling it for you, audiences, as major events in the movie and its effects linger throughout the film. At first, the flick may come across as a crime-centered thriller with a lead too-fitting for the role of a cattle farmer. As the story unfolds, you realize the crime plot is no more than a tool to explore the character of hothead, Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts). Who is he and how did he get involved in this illegal hormone boosting cattle trade? It all begins to unravel when Jacky meets Diederik who was part of the meeting with the hormone mafia. The two has never seen each other for 20 years. The initially tough "Bullhead" as many would call Jacky, begins to break his exterior in front of the lens.We are then introduced to his life-altering past with his childhood friend, Diederik (Jeroen Perceval). As kids, they were always together. It was also the time when their fathers introduced them to the business of hormone-boosting cattle. While their fathers are dealing with the higher ups in the mafia, the two meet the psychologically-challenged Bruno and his sister, Lucia (Jeanne Dandoy). Jacky develops a crush toward Lucia and convinces Diederik to help him pursue the girl. It was then the pair accidentally snooped around Bruno and his gang until they were chased into the open field. What happened to Jacky is something every male would never want to happen for themselves.Suddenly, the viewer understands the lead's excessive use of steroids. It could be to make up for what he has lost. The damaging event has left Jacky an insecure, 30 something buff man who is lonely and struggling to accept what has happened to him. The return of Diederik and Lucia in his life is only the beginning of his agony as he tries to pursue the girl he liked as a kid. Interlaced with the hormone mafia deal is the death of a police officer which connects the Vanmarsenille's because of Jacky's brother buying tires from two French Walloons.Bullhead is more than a crime drama but an in-depth character exploration on a subject not many movies have touched. It also weaves perfectly the question of sexuality and the importance of masculinity in a man. The contrast between Jacky and Diederik who happens to be gay as an adult, holds a strong message at its best. There is no doubt that the film received an Oscar nomination under the foreign language category because of Matthias Schoenaerts' captivating performance and director Michaël R. Roskam's choice of shots and magnetic storytelling. Schoenaerts is definitely an actor you will see more of in the coming years.Dubbed as a dark and powerful cinematic experience, Bullhead will pierce right into your heart. You will find yourself rooting for the character despite his obvious flaws and dangerous persona.The Belgian film, Bullhead (Rundskop) takes you on an unexpected emotional journey of a misunderstood beast so strong on the surface yet only an innocent child searching for a chance to undo some things that happened in his life.writelikesundance.wordpress.com

Now, what do we have here? On the one hand, we start off hearing a gloomy monologue of the main character speaking of fate, how it can not be avoided and everything will turn to *poop* - as Belgian farmers generally may or may not be inclined to believe...? Then straight after, we are pulled into the story of the hormone mafia (to increase meat production, cows are given hormone injections, and the murder of an investigator is based on the true case of Karel van Noppen), but pay attention, because it is kind of hard to follow. Then, after some time, we go back twenty years in time and learn of a completely different story, which also goes back to the opening monologue of the film, and (among other things) a connection between the main character and a criminal / informant is explained.These two stories could have worked together, but it just hardly feels rightly combined in this film. At times I wished they had made this into a TV-series, because many characters and issues deserved so much more elaborating. And, I speak of two stories, but there's actually much more going on (for instance a sort of love story and the police doing a sting operation), so 129 minutes is the least they could have used.The most important scene in all this seems to be the brutal beating of main character's privates Jacky at a young age. It's sheer shock value can't be denied, and everything after seems like kid's stuff(!); in any case it puts the story of the hormone mafia (and the police chasing them) in a shady corner. If only that story had died down in the film, but unfortunately, it didn't.And then there are these strangely humorous (I do believe they might be quite Belgian) moments, e.g. the religious vision of Jacky, the gay man (accidentally?) farting on the phone and the police woman's reaction to it, the main character asking the same (gay) man if he's gay and the gay man trying to hide his true identity; in themselves not really funny moments, but more reminiscent of a film like Fargo, where funny meets real, sort of.Finally, the gloomy look of the film is pretty much spot on, I enjoyed it, as well as pretty much all of the acting. But all in all, this is a tough one to give a good rating. There's just too much mixing in the story lines to be truly convinced, although I did easily sit it out.

This movie is about the exciting intrigue of illegal growth hormone use in cows...and centers on a ball-less main character who uses this hormone expertise and connections to inject himself with testosterone which he lacks. Apparently the police are out to stop the growth hormone use and a cop gets killed. There is a long sequence involving a BMW 5 series and tires that was obscure but by that time I couldn't care less what was going on and couldn't make myself rewind or whatever it would take to understand things.My God have they exhausted every possible story line to come up with this???I liked the comment that said this movie looks like it was shot with an old Nokia phone camera....not only that it is endless following some very rural looking Flemish hicks engaged in this less than exciting crime and cops which are hard to tell from the hormone boot leggers.After about 30 minutes you decide this thing is hopelessly slow and boring.Strangely this movie seems to have made all the international film festivals---the main character whose privates don't work has a crush on the sister of the guy that did it to him...Character development unfortunately fails and you don't give a s!@t about the protagonist or any of the characters in this boring thing. I think the problems with it are it is so visually uninteresting and so slow moving that some how you just don't develop any rapport especially with the muscle bound protagonist who injects some testosterone and then starts shadow boxing every 10 minutes. There must be an hour of film showing close ups of his face with what looks like a broken nose.At about an hour I fast forwarded it to the very end to see what happens...The main character injects and takes every known steroid then turns into the hulk attacking the police and is shot.DO NOT RECOMMEND