Short Sharp Shock (1998)

“Gabriel” (Mehmet Kurtulus) has an history of petty larcenies with his pals “Bobby” (Aleksandar Jovanovic) and “Costa” (Adam Bousdoukos) but on his release from prison, he decides that there has to be more to life and that he wants to go and run a boat chartering business. Of course they think he’s jesting and when “Bobby” goes and gets himself involved with some seriously menacing Albanians that risks just about everyone, “Gabriel” has to rethink his plans. For my money, it’s the rudderless wastrel “Costa” who serves as the pivot of the plot here, but all three male characters work really quite convincingly together as they test their own loyalties, those of the women in their lives - notably “Alice” (Regula Grauwiller) and their determination to face down the brutal “Muhamer” (Ralph Herforth) as “Bobby” gets in deeper and deeper. The Hamburg scenario also adds a gritty authenticity to this, as do some very naturally presented elements of religiosity and race that in some ways strengthen our Turkish/Greek/Serbian combo and in others strain it at the seams. It’s violent but never really gratuitously so as it focuses more on the cerebral elements of gangster behaviour tempered with a good old dose of sexual melodrama, and as crime dramas go it’s really quite powerful.