You may remember this as the movie that won Best Foreign Language film, of which finally came out last week on the DVDs and the Blurays. It is in Swedish/Danish/American, with the English parts actually taking place in a Sudan refugee camp. Go figure. This movie deals with a lot of troubling issues, on both parents, and on their kids.
Okay, so far it pretty much sounds like every American drama. Kids and parents having troubling issues? Oh, please DO go on.
For the main two kids, one has just lost his mother to cancer and moved to Denmark with his dad from London, and the other is a Swedish born family in Denmark whose parents are separated. In case you couldn’t tell, this takes place in Denmark. Thankfully, London kid befriends the Ratface kid, and stands up for him, but he ends up being a bad influence too.
Bullies, Sudan warlords, divorce, cancer, bombs, suicide, near death experiences, and conflicts are all hugely part of this movie. Some of those are pretty different than normal American dramas.
I guess morally it questions what is the right thing to do. Is it good to do bad things to bad people? Great movie though. But you knew that, it won things after all. The Swedish dad who was also a doctor in the movie is going to be in the Hobbit movies too, if you wanted to see how he was at acting. Damn it, just saying Hobbit “movies” sounds wrong.
There Can Be Only One!
3 out of 4.