Common Sense Media Review
By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Anti-fascist romcom satire has violence, hatred, drugs.
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Operation: Nation
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's the Story?
OPERATION: NATION is a Polish comedy about a group of inept neo-Nazis who give the heil salute to a badly drawn swastika banner during a party celebrating Hitler's 132nd birthday. (Every slice of cake has its own swastika inside.) The group is arrested and mocked in the news, but that humiliation only shores up the conviction of Roman (Borys Szyz), the group's leader, that they need to make a statement that will be taken seriously. The first objective is to bomb a synagogue. They record a video in which Roman proclaims, "Jews get burned, our freedom is returned," as they vainly try to set fire to a fireproof stuffed doll with a beard and yarmulke drawn on. Roman's idea of a good secret code name for a stealth mission is "Operation Blow the Gays' Bus Up." Roman's cousin Stoszek (Maciej Musialowski), 20, isn't much more of an intellectual star. He's been injured out of a hoped-for soccer career and now lives at home working a dead-end car park job. The alienated and aimless youth is ripe for Roman's slimy patter and joins the group just to have somewhere to hang out. He doesn't mind bombing the synagogue as long as there are no people inside -- he's all for hating others, but not for killing them. He falls for Pola (Magdalena Mascianica), who is pursuing her master's degree, and her mockery of right-wing ideology both interests him and insults him. When he learns Roman is planning to bomb a bus carrying gay people, he asks Pola to call the police, partly to save lives and partly to win her affection.
Is It Any Good?
Getting through all 97 minutes of Operation: Nation requires a lot of teeth-gritting. The movie is as simplistic and moronic as its subjects who blame Jews, Blacks, gays, Muslims, and foreigners for all their woes. This is far worse than a movie about stupid people struggling with their stupidity. This is about racist, violent, hateful people struggling with stupidity that fosters social and political grievances and a desire to lash out at so-called enemies. It's their utter unawareness of that stupidity that makes this such a tough slog. Cocaine- and alcohol-fueled antics fall flat, resulting in a supremely unfunny version of The Hangover. More than that, our main character Stosz, no genius himself, seems to innocently fall in with his cousin's group of dumb, hate-mongering losers. Why does he want to be with them? And why does he just as inexplicably later decide he can take no more of them? And why would master's degree candidate Pola fall for Stosz? Views on the left also are treated as simplistic and trendy, and, for an added cliché, it's a given that government officials are corrupt. Why does Stosz seem to be shocked to learn that his Nazi cohorts want to kill people? Why is Roman so filled with hate? As one member of the group defends such sentiments before the gay bus bombing puts it: "They're not people."
The same subject is handled with expert wit and insight in the film Jojo Rabbit, mocking Nazis and their views without this film's ambiguity, and with lots of humor and intelligence. The neo-Nazis in Operation: Nation are presented as boobs who are nevertheless serious about their "White pride" mission to "free Poland." When someone asks in what way Poland is not free, the leader answers, it is actually "too free." He doesn't want freedom to extend to gays and Blacks and Muslims and Jews in Poland. An attempt is made to equate ignorance with prejudice, as a graduate student remarks that half of surveyed parents said that if they discovered their child was a "homo sapien," they would throw the child out of the house. This comes across as condescending elitist venting, not a dazzling insight into the heart of nationalist fear and bias. The movie's ineptitude is depressingly hard to watch.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the dangers of attempting to mock extremist views. How do you present violent hatred in a way that represents those views but also mocks them? Could some people who hold such views root for the people the filmmakers are mocking?
What do you think causes people to call other people "apes" or suggest that Jews and gays aren't "people," so killing them is OK?
How do you convey that a movie is making fun of a point of view rather than supporting that point of view?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : April 12, 2023
- Cast : Borys Szyz , Maciej Musialowski , Magdalena Mascianica
- Director : Piotr Kumik
- Studio : Netflix
- Genre : Comedy
- Run time : 97 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : April 25, 2023
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