Scarborn (Kos) review – stirring up trouble in 18th-century Poland

When a veteran of the American war of independence returns to his native country with popular rule on his mind dangerous passions ignite

This Polish historical drama is an odd duck of a feature but there’s definitely a cinematic flair to proceedings. For a start, a lot of it unfolds over one evening in a candlelit setting, so you may have to screw up your eyes in order to make out what’s going on. My advice is to then surrender to its strange tonality and weird flat stretches, because the ending pulls most of the strands together satisfyingly and goes out with bangs, whizzes and a fair few sword thrusts.

The year is 1794, and it’s not long since the American war of independence has finished, in which Polish hero Tadeusz “Kos” Kościuszko (a real historical figure, played here by Chris Pine lookalike Jacek Braciak) fought valiantly on the side of the American rebels. Now he’s back in what’s left of Poland, a nation with particularly elastic borders at that time as various neighbours invade and pull back, especially the Russians. Kos is accompanied by his friend Domingo (Jason Mitchell), a freed slave and top marksman, and together the two of them are hoping to start something in Poland and get the peasants revolting against the oppressive nobility. That sort of social order shake-up would definitely be a boon for folks such as Ignac Sikora (Bartosz Bielenia), the bastard son of a local landowner who has promised with his dying breath to leave Ignac some kind of inheritance in his will.

This puts Ignac at odds with his foppish yet brutal half-brother Stanislaw (Piotr Pacek); after an assortment of side quests and intersecting subplots, everyone ends up at the home of a recently widowed woman in cahoots with Kos just as a Russian calvary unit arrives, led by Dunin (Robert Więckiewicz), a silky villain in the manner of Christoph Waltz at his hammiest. Indeed, the publicity for this keeps pushing the film’s similarities to late period Quentin Tarantino, especially the period stuff like Inglourious Basterds or Django Unchained; thankfully, this is much less self-indulgent, pacier and way more serious, and is all the better for it. I’d rather watch this, for all its oddness, than The Hateful Eight any day of the week.

• Scarborn (Kos) is on Viaplay UK from 27 April.