Mr. Car and the Knights Templar (Pan Samochodzik i Templariusze, 2023) Movie Review: Every kind of template for a film has its own distinct potential when done well. Even a classic meet-cute romantic comedy that faithfully follows all the familiar beats can shine if the โloversโ have great chemistry and the heart is in the right place. And the same holds true for a childrenโs movie, which can be revisionist and truly one of the finest things of its time if done well. However, given its positioning as a template, it also becomes difficult to pull off even when you stick to all the beats. Today, even kids can’t be defined as an easy target audience since impatience and quality have become the core of all humanity.
Speaking of difficulties, the new Polish film on Netflix, Mr. Car, and the Knights Templar, provides a range of them. And although challenges are the key to the success of most exploration/treasure hunt narratives, the ones provided here are mostly all banal and unexciting. You never get a sense of the stakes behind the screen, and so the film gets awfully close to becoming plain background noise. Such a waste because it fetches its source material from one of the most treasured pieces of Polandโs native literature.
Written by Polish novelist Zbigniew Nienacki, the Pan Samochodzik (titled Mister Automobile in English) books is about a museum employee, his fantastic automobile, and his various treasure hunt conquests, which were a hit among the readers, so much so that Nienacki wrote a series of sixteen books in a span of forty years. In fact, there is no end to the stories, and other writers have continued to write these books, the latest 163rd one published in 2022.
The historical detective stories incorporated amusing side characters and even the flaws of the handsome hero to outstanding effect and palpably blended them with the countryโs known historical facts. The adventures of Tomasz NZ also carried an intelligent political sense, and although he is many times called the Indiana Jones of Poland, the fictional character very much remained a self-made man. This particular film is based on one of the original novels, Pan Samochodzik and the Knights Templar, written in 1966 and is often considered the most beloved of the series.
Watching the narrative unfold, it is not hard to see why. The incorporation of little boy Scouts who are friends with differing vibes and opinions and that of a journalist who is not entirely approving of Tomaszโs ways but is also curious about the need to find treasures, thus making that the subject of her article, are sparkling bullet points in themselves which can sit comfortably with the making of a brilliant adventure film. However, the sense of watching an actual film often vanishes into thin air, and all we get is a narrative unfolding at its own pace.
There are a lot of so-bad-they-are-good moments peppered in the first two acts here. The action sequences seem to carry some amount of effort, but they are so brief and driven by background music that they would leave you wanting, and not in a good way. In fact, there is a stretch towards the last thirty minutes, which is awfully boring, as the explorer and his team wander from one place to the other on the basis of empty assumptions about where the treasure might be. This confuses us about whether we are watching some of the most intelligent people in Europe or just plain idiots who are doing what the script asks them to do.
In fact, none of the actors seem to have read the novel to understand the characters, and certainly not the leading actor Mateusz Janicki, who is laughably bad as the titular Mr. Car and seems to try and look intentionally dumb at times. He walks the tightrope of a proper pulp-movie hero but fails miserably and, unfortunately, delivers one of the worst performances that I have seen this year so far.
It was also incredibly sad to see Sandra Drzymalska, so good in EO, getting wasted in a love interest character, probably the most sincerely written character of the script yet far from convincing. The other performances are so threadbare and trivial that they are not even worthy of discussion.
The editing is especially awful, Wojciech Wลodarski sometimes seems to lose the sense of where to cut a scene and lets the walking and staring linger on uncomfortably. The debut direction of Antoni Nykowski is deeply unfocused, and he would have to work a lot on his craft, however, mainstream and accessible he might choose to go. In fact, the only person in the entire crew who seems to be taking his job seriously is the cinematographer Kamil Pลocki. His sense of lighting and the ways he figures out to film a location are brilliant. He brings a photographic beauty to the table, which is incredible because he never lets such a thinly executed and badly written film look ugly.
But its many contrivances aside, what truly lets the film down is its constant obsession to match the look and feel of similar American products manufactured for Netflix and the pointless need to get close to an American sense of humor, which is definitely not borrowed from the source material. If they wish to continue telling the stories of Mr. Car, they need to do things differently.
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