Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.
Kieslowski's expanded Dekalog episode is a singular moral tract against capital punishment. The desaturated, sickly yellow-green cinematography by Slawomir Idziak is among the most distinctive and deliberately oppressive visual styles in European cinema — a genuine outlier in craft. The plot's cold, unflinching parallel structure (killer and lawyer introduced before the murder, then mirrored by the state's own killing) is conceptually rigorous and morally devastating. Novelty is high because no other film quite replicates its specific tone of bureaucratic dread and moral equivalence. The ending, while thematically consistent, is more a grim inevitability than a dramatically surprising or resonant payoff, keeping it from the top tier. Acting is competent and naturalistic but not a particular standout across the board.