AllMovie

One of master surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer's less symbolic and mores straightforward efforts, Muzne Hry (which translates roughly as Manly Games) is also one of his most viscerally powerful films. The point of Muzne is obvious: that an overabundance of violence has a desensitizing effect. This point is brought home even more clearly in the second half of the film, as the extreme violence literally spills out of the viewer's television set and into his home. Despite the fact that the violence has become intensely "up close and personal," the viewer barely registers any change. (What is interesting is not how the onscreen viewer reacts to all of this, but how the "real" viewer -- the one who is sitting in the audience and watching the film -- reacts. He may flinch, but the darkly humorous manner in which the surfeit of violence is presented makes it more palatable -- and, therefore, desensitizes it.) The combination of pixilation and clay animation is done with Svankmajer's customary expertise, and the filmmaker also is comfortable using color (for the first time) and employing a directly contemporary setting and theme. Muzne may lack the depth of some of Svankmajer's other work, but its simplicity gives it an undeniable wallop.