AllMovie

Hampered by a low-budget, director Mircea Veroiu has still created an effective black-and-white film on the resistance movement in Romania in 1934. The story focuses on the exploits of Sarka (Gheorghe Visu), a circus performer, and Horatio (Claudio Bleont), a student, as they join forces to fight rising fascism in Romania -- but many viewers would read parallels to the situation in the country in the early 1980s (several years before the bloody dictator Ceausescu was ousted from his military rule and executed). Sarka and Horatio are shown risking life and limb; at one point, they hide submerged in a water tower to escape detection by Nazi soldiers, and at another point, Sarka is sprung from jail by one of his courageous circus friends. Eventually, Sarka and Horatio become separated, and although it might be easier for at least one to survive on his own, the odds against both surviving are very low indeed.