KAJÍNEK

Jiří Kajínek, the most popular criminal in the Czech Republic. Sentenced to life imprisonment for double homicide in 1993, Kajínek managed to spectacularly escape from his high-security prison in 2000. The central figure of the conspiracy reaches the peak of self-aggrandisement. Since his first sentence conspiracy theories and doubts as to the guilt of the reticent prisoner abound. A renewal of the trial has been sought several times, defence witnesses have received death threats. Rumours of the entanglement of high-ranking police officials refuse to go away. Thus the case also shines light on the shady side of the period of transition after the Velvet Revolution and challenges the myth of a peaceful evolution. The director makes a frenetic action film of the Kajínek-affair, incisively cut to produce both a kind of playboy atmosphere and a sense for investigative ethics. His adaptation of the story is based upon the efforts of a young lawyer to elucidate the mysterious circumstances of the case. That she herself becomes a target for the both real and fictional unapprehended backers of the murders is, together with the amorous tension between the killer and his lawyer, an integral part of this energy-packed thriller. The beauty and the beast in the form of a high-budget European action film, a symbiosis of popular cinema and film as a director's personal vision.