City Unplugged Review by Dave Kehr on New York Daily News

DAILY

NEWS

New York's Hometown Newspaper

Friday, June 23,1995

Amp of Approval
To 'City Unplugged'

Estonian-set heist thriller provides
some jolts, laced with ironic humor

***

CITY UNPLUGGED. Ivo Uukkivi, Milena
Gulbe. Directed by Ilkka Jarvilaturi. In Estonian with English subtitles. At the Quad Cinema. Running time: 99 mins. Unrated.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE Soviet Union has produced some curious phenomena, not the least of which is "City Unplugged" - a taut, violent and drippingly sarcastic thriller directed by a Finn (Ilkka Jarvi-
laturi), written by an
American (Paul
Kolsby) and set in
former Soviet client
state Estonia.

According to the
press notes, "City Unplugged" was hatched in a restaurant at 18th St. and Broadway, where Jarvilaturi and Kolsby, an old friend from NYU, were inspired by a newspaper photograph of an Estonian banker accepting the return of his country's gold deposits from France, where they had been hidden during World War II and

the Soviet occupation.

Recognizing a perfect heist- movie plot when they saw one, the pair laid out the basic story line over lunch, abetted by "an entire afternoon — not including the lunch break — in a library studying Estonia and its culture." Two weeks later, they had a script; six months later, they had financing.
A sort of "Reservoir Dogs Go Baltic," "City Unplugged" combines the tough-guy cliches of American gangster films with the depressive, deadpan humor that is a Finnish specialty.

Toivo (Ivo Uukkivi) is an electrical engineer who has adjusted to the
diminished expectations of life in the Eastern bloc, living in the grim capital city of Tallinn in a cramped apartment with his hugely pregnant wife (Milena Gulbe) and a collection of thrift-shop furniture.

When Toivo is pressured by an underworld relative into joining

BALTIC BAD BOY: Tõnu Kark in Tallinn-set "City Unplugged"

the mad attempt to steal the Estonian treasury's newly returned $900 million in gold, he feels a few moral qualms. But his wife urges him to go for the cash.

It's his job to cripple the city's electrical system while a battalion of Russian thugs takes over the central bank building; only much later does he discover that, as he extinguishes the city's power sup-
ply, his wife is being rushed to the hospital for a premature delivery. Unless he can single-handedly defeat the gangsters' plot, there will be no power for the baby's incubator.

Shooting in a high-contrast black and white, with a symbolic burst into color for the concluding reels,

Jarvilaturi creates a dank, night-marish world of industrial rubble and decaying Soviet imperial architecture. It's a landscape that functions both as metaphor and as a visually intriguing background to some well-staged action sequences.

"City Unplugged" (also known as "Darkness in Tallinn") piles up mountains of corpses as it progresses, though ultimately evades the cynicism of so much recent American work in this genre.
Toivo's incubator baby comes to represent the future of Estonia. The chances for survival seem good.

(Unrated: Violence, adult situ-
ations, brief nudity.)


DAILYNEWS

New York's Hometown Newspaper		Friday, June 23,1995

Amp of Approval To 'City Unplugged' Estonian-set heist thriller provides some jolts, laced with ironic humor
*** CITY UNPLUGGED. Ivo Uukkivi, Milena Gulbe. Directed by Ilkka Jarvilaturi. In Estonian with English subtitles. At the Quad Cinema. Running time: 99 mins. Unrated. THE COLLAPSE OF THE Soviet Union has produced some curious phenomena, not the least of which is "City Unplugged" - a taut, violent and drippingly sarcastic thriller directed by a Finn (Ilkka Jarvi- laturi), written by an American (Paul Kolsby) and set in former Soviet client state Estonia. According to the press notes, "City Unplugged" was hatched in a restaurant at 18th St. and Broadway, where Jarvilaturi and Kolsby, an old friend from NYU, were inspired by a newspaper photograph of an Estonian banker accepting the return of his country's gold deposits from France, where they had been hidden during World War II and	the Soviet occupation. Recognizing a perfect heist- movie plot when they saw one, the pair laid out the basic story line over lunch, abetted by "an entire afternoon — not including the lunch break — in a library studying Estonia and its culture." Two weeks later, they had a script; six months later, they had financing. A sort of "Reservoir Dogs Go Baltic," "City Unplugged" combines the tough-guy cliches of American gangster films with the depressive, deadpan humor that is a Finnish specialty. Toivo (Ivo Uukkivi) is an electrical engineer who has adjusted to the diminished expectations of life in the Eastern bloc, living in the grim capital city of Tallinn in a cramped apartment with his hugely pregnant wife (Milena Gulbe) and a collection of thrift-shop furniture. When Toivo is pressured by an underworld relative into joining
			BALTIC BAD BOY: Tõnu Kark in Tallinn-set "City Unplugged"
			the mad attempt to steal the Estonian treasury's newly returned $900 million in gold, he feels a few moral qualms. But his wife urges him to go for the cash. It's his job to cripple the city's electrical system while a battalion of Russian thugs takes over the central bank building; only much later does he discover that, as he extinguishes the city's power sup- ply, his wife is being rushed to the hospital for a premature delivery. Unless he can single-handedly defeat the gangsters' plot, there will be no power for the baby's incubator. Shooting in a high-contrast black and white, with a symbolic burst into color for the concluding reels,	Jarvilaturi creates a dank, night-marish world of industrial rubble and decaying Soviet imperial architecture. It's a landscape that functions both as metaphor and as a visually intriguing background to some well-staged action sequences. "City Unplugged" (also known as "Darkness in Tallinn") piles up mountains of corpses as it progresses, though ultimately evades the cynicism of so much recent American work in this genre. Toivo's incubator baby comes to represent the future of Estonia. The chances for survival seem good. (Unrated: Violence, adult situ- ations, brief nudity.)