Bullhead (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]

This film is a masterpiece at depicting the long-term, systemic, destructive impact of trauma on a human being's life. It captures inescapable shock and horror and the price children pay for being powerless and helpless. It is a study of a man trying to manage the unmanageable through coping strategies that heal nothing. The silent suffering he endures moment to moment, his isolation, despair and hopelessness are barely contained. Matthias portrays a man who lives with loss so great that it penetrates to the very depths of his soul where the real damage is done. His performance is leveling. He lives with the knowledge that he will never be whole. I feel I have been waiting for a movie that could go there - full circle - to the point of no return. A film that would so skillfully and gracefully dare to give a face to the walking mortally wounded. This has been an important film for me and I am grateful to those involved for creating a story about this dimension of our humanity.

It was a brutal movie, but really an excellent one. I did not expect the plot to be like that. It surprised me in a good way. It is a story of a boy/man who was attacked and brutalized by a boy who himself was mentally sick. The injury was so extensive that in order to function as a man he would have to take hormones the rest of his life. Twenty years later, he is challenged by the effects of the hormones, what they do to him, and how the simply fact he is lonely and still pines for the same girl he got attacked for. He is feared, and he is respected. He belongs to the family who deals with selling meat, but the meat or rather cows are injected with hormones. There is additional story there, a criminal that intertwines with main's character and in the end it decides about his whole life. Matthias Schoenaert is excellent as Jacky. He is bulky, strong, penancing, but at the same time tender, hurt, and caring. His face says everything. Each emotion is there, his body adds to it, the pain, the harshness of hormones, the struggle and the void in his life. It is an excellent movie that I would recommend everyone to see.

i,m speechless...i have never seen a performance like that ...not even brando could sustain such a display of a person wanting something so desperately and so unable to reach out for it.....the rest of the movie was almost superfluous.....the theme of castration is literal here...but freud's castration neurosis syndrome is just as real and just as sad...i kept seeing that in this masterpiece of acting and directing

This whole film was tense. It was wound tight like a guitar string and I didn't know when it would snap, whip back, and cut my face open.This is Jacky's story. There are other characters but I was focused like a laser on Jacky. I found this movie after loving Schoenaerts in Rust & Bone. He blew me away in that movie but in this one he obliterated me. Jacky is a cow farmer who is constantly injecting himself with steroids and hormones. the cows are injected too and this movie has quite a bit about the shady dealings that go on behind the scenes in the cow farming business. That was surprising. Anyway, Jacky is constantly pumped full of chemicals and whatnot. Have you ever heard of 'roid rage? Times that by a thousand. Jacky is like being surrounded by a million grenades...you know they're going to go off and what it happens, watch out.There are flashbacks to Jacky's childhood that hint they will reveal his obsession with steroids and his very screwed up interactions with women. Many people have said the beginning of this film is slow. It was, I guess, but for me it was a slow burn that I knew would end up setting the characters' world on fire.When Jacky's past trauma is revealed...shocking doesn't quite cover it. Shocking doesn't cover it at all. It's so violent and traumatic to watch.I thought that would be it but the movie kept going, I kept watching, and that wire snapped and definitely cut me open. I'm not sure a movie ending has ever made my chest hurt as much as this one did. Schoenaerts broke my heart. Absolutely broke it.When I review movies I try not to give too much of them away, so I just give my impressions, feelings, and emotions while watching. This film was a revelation about the cruelty of children, the loss of innocence, the nature of violence and how it takes root and grows. I always want to watch it again but I'm also scared to have my emotions played so skillfully. I'll tell you one thing, watch it because it's worth it.

This has got to be one of the most intense film I've seen next to The Departed. It is not quite that bloody though it is plenty bloody. And it is intense and much more human than The Departed.Jacky, the main character, is literally a testosterone freak, an accident waiting to happen. He is as hyped up as the cows he injects with hormone as part of his mafia hormone operation. The saddest part of this movie is that he is no different then the cows. He has muscles in all the wrong places (literally) and is just grotesque.On an ordinary day decades before, the deranged son of a mafia boss severely mangles a boy, taking away any future chance for that boy to ever become a potent man. So Jacky is a wounded child trapped in a crippled man's body and will never reach his full potential. It is a violent world. Jacky plays his part all too well.But Jacky is not the only one stranded in the veil of the past. Those who bore witness to the child' struggles after the devastating attack will never escape the guilt and the anger of that day.One way or another, Bullhead never hesitates. The acting is brilliant and our heart breaks...for Jacky.

Even though I don't speak the same language and was reading the subtitles it was still very intense. Once Jacky's backstory came to light I was heart broken for the child and the man he became. The longing and the pain he portrayed was so intense Jacky paced like a caged animal. There were so many storylines going on that all come back to one day 20 years ago. Matthias was at his all time best in this film, no other actor could have brought to the table what he did. Just wow

Belgian screenwriter and director Michaël R. Roskam`s feature film debut which he also wrote, is a Belgian production which was produced by Bart Van Langendock. It tells the story about Jacky Vanmarsenille, a cattle farmer from the Sint-Truiden area of Flanders who is part of a mafia that deals with meat and hormones. One day Jacky is contacted by a veterinarian who wants him to make a deal with a notorious West-Flemish beef trader. Jacky agrees, but when he unexpectedly is reunited with his childhood friend Diederik, he is reminded of an incident that has been tormenting him ever since it happened.Michaël R. Roskam`s finely directed first feature is a character-driven and plot-driven drama that draws an incisive portrayal of a huge Limburgian man who has been marked for life by a terrible occurrence from the past that now confronts him and becomes even more upsetting. This unconventional tale of a Belgian underground crime syndicate that is shaken when a local policeman is killed, contains a wide range of rare characters and is both an atmospheric mystery and an internal study of character about friendship and the afflicting consequences of lost innocence.Finely photographed by cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis, this at times humerous, violent and well-paced thriller is reinforced by Matthias Schoenaerts` riveting acting performance in the leading role and the good supporting acting performances. An unsettling and engagingly narrated independent film which gained a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards in 2012.

Will make you think differently about Flemish dairy products, cows the size of bulls, childhood violence growing into adult angst.

A present but well liked

Not bad

great acting