MOVIE REVIEW

Filmmaker Nimród Antal heads into the subway of Hungary's capital city to tell a boisterous yet spiritual tale.

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

At the beginning of Nimród Antal's engrossing "Kontroll," an official of the Budapest Transport Co. self-consciously peers into Antal's camera and explains that the first-time feature director was granted permission to film in the world's second-largest subway system with the understanding that the picture would not be taken literally, but symbolically. "Kontroll" is in fact an allegory, but one that oozes a gritty, dynamic realism that no bureaucrat would consider good PR even though criticizing Budapest Transport is not at all Antal's point.

Antal focuses on the seedy but darkly charismatic young Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), a ticket inspector crew leader for the subway's Control team assigned to one of the city's roughest areas. Bulcsú, pronounced "bull-chew," is a previously high-achieving rat-race dropout who has ended up in a Dante-like circle of hell. He and his scruffy four-man crew encounter every kind of passenger without tickets or passes, some pathetic, some dangerous, some so outrageous as to be darkly funny. There is, for example, the burly young pimp who travels the subway regularly with his charges and is always trying to get a ticket inspector to let them all ride free in exchange for sex with one of his prostitutes.

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The point is that Bulcsú has become caught up in this often challenging existence, with its warm camaraderie on the one hand and high-risk rivalries with other crew leaders on the other, to the extent that he is addicted to it as surely as a compulsive Las Vegas gambler is to his way of life. It has reached the point that Bulcsú never leaves the subway and has taken to sleeping on station benches and even the platform floor.

The trajectory of the film involves Bulcsú beginning to wonder whether he has the will to go aboveground again, and the events that drive him to discover whether this is true or not.

Transport officials begin to suspect that a rash of jumpers in front of subway cars are not suicides but murders — in other words the victims were pushed. This would be the natural focus of a less imaginative film. But here the unknown serial killer — and there does seem to be one on the loose — represents the dark forces within himself that Bulcsú needs to face to set himself free.

In this journey he is inspired by the recurring presence of a young woman named Sofie (Eszter Balla), who wears a pink plush bear suit and who subtly urges him toward the light. Why she is wearing such a costume is never revealed, but she does seem to be a real person, the daughter of Béla (Lajos Kovács), a warm, bearded, paternal subway car driver.

The subway system is a richly atmospheric, highly photogenic setting, and Antal makes the most of it, as he does of a large, vigorous supporting cast that includes Csaba Pindroch, as a headstrong youth who unfortunately falls into a narcoleptic state whenever he becomes agitated, and Zoltán Mucsi as Bulcsú's senior crew member, a wise, worn man who mentors Tibi (Zsolt Nagy), the sometimes hotheaded, naive newcomer to Bulcsú's team.

"Kontroll" is that singular success, a thoroughly satisfying, rambunctious entertainment that also subtly works on philosophical and spiritual levels.

'Kontroll'

MPAA rating: R for language, some violence, brief sexuality

Times guidelines: Too gamy and bruising for youngsters

A TH!NKFilm release Writer-director Nimród Antal. Producer Tamás Hutlassa. Cinematographer Gyula Pados. Editor István Király. In Magyar, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes. At selected theaters.