The Border Post (Karaula)

Told as a carefree series of serio-comic encounters, recalling the spirit of Catch-22, and as such it's no surprise that that film flirts with inconsequentiality.

The script is fresh and accessible -- even for folks who don't know Croatia from Cambodia -- and it is put over by solid acting and direction.

Rajko Grlic's film is a sometimes wistful, sometimes farcical comedy, in the honorable Eastern European tradition, set along the Yugoslav-Albanian border in the halcyon days of 1987.

Border Post is a profane and playful military drama about boredom, duty and the consequences of reckless lust.

Border Post contains some genuinely amusing moments and feeling for humanity. Only one element is lacking, any hint as to why the region would be engulfed in fratricidal war within a few years' time.

First and foremost, what good comedies require are credible characters, which this film doesn't have.