Walking Too Fast

The film Walking Too Fast is not about the StB. That’s merely the main character’s starting point. Walking Too Fast combines two themes in the main character, namely the well-known burnout syndrome and the referenced inability to apply absolute power. Antonín has gained the maximum, but basically has nothing. He's made it to the top, but he's been climbing for so long that he's unable to remember what it looks like beneath him. So he fixates on the farthest possible goal so that he can keep going, but even that is approaching dangerously fast. I could have complained about the ever-scratchy post-synchronization work that Czech films suffer from terribly, I could have sputtered about the unnecessarily undynamic direction again, except for a few moments (the scene in the forest), but all that pales in comparison to moments that you simply won't see elsewhere. (03/15/2011)

Strong Czech drama. I was actually quite surprised that I hadn't heard much about the film. Yes, it's from the time before the revolution and it might bother some that there are so many similar films here, but it beautifully portrays the paranoia of the time and what a person could do when they were in the "right" place. Excellent performances by the actors and a great psychological human drama. (12/04/2014)

One would expect a 2.5-hour film to have enough space to satisfy the viewer with a solid and meaningful finale with the stories of all (or at least most) of the characters wrapped up. Alas. In this regard, Walking Too Fast failed in its entirety. That’s a great pity, especially considering the performances that Špaček's film has (the great Ondřej Malý, the woefully, egregiously underused Oldřich Kaiser and others). (04/25/2011)

Through Štindl's magnificent script, precise and detailed production design (it brought back memories of the ticket punching machines in trams, etc.) and an inventive soundtrack, Špaček tells an interesting, weighty and well-crafted psychological portrait of a brooding bastard who plays at being a demigod from his position as member of the secret police. I consider the final meeting in the dissident's flat to be the best executed and acted scene in a Czech film last year. Ondřej Malý can already prepare a shelf for the Czech Lion. (01/10/2011)

A psychological game played out over a period of two and half hours, with peons muddling through in a political system that had no winners and was a cancer on the human soul. Walking Too Fast is built on an excellent script with detailed portrayal of the characters and their twisted encounters, the maximum focus of the actors, and precise direction that might be slow but hits the bull’s eye. Don’t mind the initial slow pace, the lack of famous actors and visual minimalism evoking a TV production – everything, including coldly portrayed housing estates and the monotonous music, which adds tension to dramatic psychological moments, has its place. But it is definitely not a pleasant, audience-friendly film. It’s a very sad film that the current teen generation, untouched by Czechoslovakia’s past, will find hard to believe. (01/11/2010)