People generally think of forbidden fruit being the sweetest and that explains why Serbian films enjoyed popularity in early 1990s Croatia - in a time when a kind word about anything Serbian was deemed equal to treason. Couple of years after the end of war a few enterprising pioneers decided to exploit this phenomenon by acquiring Croatian video distribution rights for Serbian films. Due to bizarre set of circumstances, arrival of those films in Croatian video- stores coincided with the start of NATO bombing campaign against Serbia. One of the films satisfying Croatian audience's curiosity at the time was The Policeman from the Cock's Hill a.k.a. Policajac sa Petlovog brda, 1992 comedy directed by Mihailo Vukobratović.
Protagonist of this film (whose title was inspired by Bevelry Hills Cop) is Boško Simić (played by Ljubiša Samardžić), Belgrade police inspector whose skills and dedication strike fear into the hearts of even the toughest Serbian criminals. Boško's private life, on the other hand, is completely different matter. He had been married and divorced four times, which resulted in four children. To make things worse, all of Boško's ex-wives happen to be workaholic professionals so poor Boško practically has to act as a single parent. After a while, all that begins to affect Boško's professional life, but with emotional support from his family, he would be able to solve those problems.
Most of 1990s Serbian films were dealing with war, rampaging organised crime and other Serbia's problems. The Policeman from the Cock's Hill, on the other hand, continues with tradition of "decent", light-hearted family-friendly comedy that tried (and, to a certain degree succeeded), to transplant Western middle class values into socialist Yugoslavia. Mihailo Vukobratović, whose popular 1985 teen comedy It Isn't Easy to Get Along with Men represents a textbook example of such films, tries to repeat the formula in The Policeman from the Cock's Hill. The children in this film are adorable, there aren't any real villains and the attitude towards life is generally positive. This probably represented sharp contrast and provided some sort of escape for audiences in early 1990s Serbia. On the other hand, The Policeman from the Cock's Hill suffers from annoyingly slow pace, jokes aren't very funny and the acting is at times as theatrical as in Croatian films made at the same time. Although watchable, this film can be recommended only to those viewers with insatiable appetite for former Yugoslav cinema.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on June 15th 2004)
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