There was a time when a country's wartime films were invariably glossy propaganda pieces. Not so these days, as is seen from the works of Serbians like the famed Emir Kusturica (Underground) and this young hotshot Srdjan Dragojevic, whose film The Wounds is about to hit video stores here.

The Wounds follows a pair of boys through the moral vacuum of their adolescence, coinciding with the first half of the '90s in wartorn Yugoslavia. The duo, Pinki and Kraut, slowly evolve (devolve?) from wide-eyed pubescents to brutal gangsters on the brink of adulthood, their blackened little hearts at odds with their angelic faces.

Like Kusturica, whose weapon of choice is scathing satire, Dragojevic knows how to squeeze the loudest laughter out of the most savage situations. Kraut's grandmother delivers some hilarious pot-fuelled WWII memories, Pinki's dad's good for goofy, racist patriotism, and Dickie, the boys' sleazy role model, is a non-stop barrel of laffs (until he O.D.s--oops).

At the same time, utter nihilism is staved off with some incisive and poignantly human touches. The Wounds shares a lot with the new school of gangster films out of Hong Kong--the black humour, the unflinching violence, the awkward sympathy for young Turks who know full well that crime is the only path out of poverty and hopelessness.

--Rupert Bottenberg