The Last Viking (4 Stars)

This is the first film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

Anker and Manfred grow up together after their mother dies and their father unexpectedly disappears. Manfred suffers from dissociative personality disorder. He thinks he's a Viking, and even dresses as a Viking when he goes to school. Anker looks after him to stop him being bullied.

As an adult, Anker takes part in a bank robbery. He knows that the police will catch him, so he entrusts his share of the money (two million dollars) to his brother. 15 years later he's released from prison, and Manfred's mental state has deteriorated further. He now thinks he's John Lennon, and he can no longer remember where he buried the cash, because he's become a different person. Anker is advised that the only way to cure Manfred is to convince him he really is John Lennon. There's another mental patient who believes he's Ringo Starr, and a third mental patient who believes he's Paul McCartney and George Harrison in one person, so Anker brings them together to reunite the Beatles.

The comedy in "The Last Viking" is ridiculous, but it works. It's a very good film.

Nothing (4½ Stars)

This is the 29th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"Nothing" (in Danish "Intet") is based on a book written in 2010. It's recognised as one of the best books ever written in Danish, and it's compulsory reading in most Danish schools. The director claims that more than 75% of the Danish population have read the book.

The film begins on the first day of school for an eighth grade class (children aged 13 to 14). One of the boys, Pierre, walks out of class, because he says that nothing matters. Life is meaningless. Everyone is a copy of a copy, and everyone will die after a life without meaning. Pierre climbs a tree and says he'll remain in the tree until he dies.

Pierre's classmates want to persuade him to come down by showing him that life has meaning. Every member of the class promises to put whatever is worth the most to him on a heap of items for Pierre to look at. The children don't pick their own items, the other children tell them what to give, based on their opinions of what the other children's most valuable items are. It starts off harmlessly. Agnes puts her favourite sandals on the heap. Then it escalates. A Moslem boy has to put his prayer mat on the heap. A Christian boy has to steal the statue of Jesus from the church. Another boy has to dig up the coffin of his dead two-year-old brother to put it on the heap. A girl's dog has to be killed to put its head on the heap. Yet another boy who plays guitar has to cut off his finger and donate it to the heap.

Do Danish children really read such dark literature in school? The film has been praised as an accurate adaptation of the book. It's a fascinating nihilistic story about the meaning of life. I don't often want to read a book after watching a film. The last time was "The Life of Pi", eight years ago. Now I need to buy "Nothing". The only thing stopping me is that there's no Kindle edition of the book in English.

Speak No Evil (3 Stars)

This is the 18th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Before the film began, the hosts quoted audience reactions from the premiere at the Sundance Film Festival:

"The director has to be mentally examined. I've seen many horror films over the years and this one is one hundred percent the most psychopathic of them all".

"Horrible, horrible film. If the film wants to get you in a bad mood, the film is pretty successful".

"This film should not be recommended to human beings. It should not be recommended as a film".

"I really hope I will forget this bad experience very soon".

So what's the film about? It starts with a Danish couple, Bjorn and Louise, meeting a Dutch couple, Patrick and Karin, while on holiday in Italy. They get on well together, and a few months later Patrick invites Bjorn and Louise to visit them. It's a beautiful house in a remote part of Holland, without any neighbours for miles. At first the guests enjoy themselves, but then they have a feeling that something is wrong.

The film is a slow burner. For the first hour so little happens that I was puzzled by the negative quotes. It's only in the last 20 minutes that the real horror of the situation becomes apparent.

Does the film live up to the quotes from the Sundance Festival? Not really. I didn't see anyone running out of the theatre screaming. On the other hand, there were several disturbing scenes, and I don't want to watch the film again.

Green Butchers (4 Stars)

This is a black comedy made in Denmark in 2003. Svend and Bjarne are two butchers who want to open their own shop. Svend takes out a mortgage on his house. Bjarne doesn't have a house, but his brother has been lying in a coma for seven years. He asks for the life support to be cut off, so that he can collect his inheritance. The hospital agrees, but shortly before the machine is turned off his brother wakes up and returns home. This annoys Bjaerne, so he requests in vain for the hospital to put him back in a coma.

This sets the film's tone. The new butcher's isn't very successful, until an accident happens. An electrician is trapped in the freezer and freezes to death overnight. Rather than report the accident to the police, Svend cuts him up and sells his body as meat. The customer reaction is so overwhelming that there's a queue in front of the shop. How can Svend maintain the success? Easy! He traps customers in the freezer every night, so that he has a constant supply of his special chicken, as he calls it.

This is a highly enjoyable film. One of the funniest things about it is Mads Mikkelsen's ridiculous hair style.

If I had hair like that I'd seriously consider shaving my head.

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Darkland (4 Stars)

This is the 28th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"Darkland" is a film about the Iraqi crime families in Denmark.

Zaid and Yasin are two brothers who live in Copenhagen. Zaid is a respectable surgeon. Yasin is a member of an Iraqi gang. Yasin makes a mistake which leads to a bank robbery failing. The leader of the gang, Semion, kills him because of his incompetence. Zaid is frustrated by the complacency of the police who show no interest in investigating the death of a 20-year-old criminal immigrant. This leads Zaid to put on a mask and hunt down Semion and his gang members.

In true Mafia fashion, Semion presents himself as the good guy. He says that he looks after the local Iraqi community, giving them money when they need help. He accuses Zaid of selfishness, earning a high salary which he keeps for himself.

This is a gritty crime thriller, which I'm sure many of my readers will enjoy.

Pusher 2 (3 Stars)

This is a difficult film for me to rate. On an intellectual level I can appreciate it as a well crafted gangster film, with an outstanding performance by Mads Mikkelsen as the incompetent crook Tonny, but I find the whole story too negative. It's not uplifting, it's a depressing film, like "Neds" which I watched earlier today.

The story continues where "Pusher" left off. Tonny is released from prison and wants to get back to work. His father gives him a job. His work is stealing luxury cars to be shipped to Russia. If this were all that Tonny is doing he would be okay. The problem is that he's doing drug deals on the side that plunge him into debt. In addition, he allies himself with one of his friends who is double-crossing his father.

It's a sick world. Nothing that we see in Copenhagen is pleasant. Tonny finds out that he fathered a child before he went into prison. The woman doesn't love Tonny, she wants to see as little of him as possible, she just wants him to pay her child support so that she can afford to buy cocaine.

I'm sure that many of my readers would rate this film higher, but it's not for me.

I was planning to watch "Pusher 3" immediately after this, but I need to pick something better, something that I know I'll enjoy. Let me go and look through my film collection.

Old men in new cars (5 Stars)

After the success of the Danish gangster film "In China they eat dogs" in 1999 the public cried out for a sequel. That wasn't possible, because almost everyone was killed at the end of the first film, so a prequel was made instead. If anything, the prequel is even better than the first film with its over-the-top action and dry humour. In fact, the humour is so dry that it could be British.

The film begins with Harald Blixen being released from prison after serving a sentence for armed robbery. He visits Munken, the gangster who was his mentor, and finds him on his death bed. Munken's dying wish is to see his son Ludvig, who is serving a life sentence for murder in Sweden. Harald and his associates travel to Sweden and manage to break Ludvig out of prison, but on the journey back to Denmark they can't stop him killing women.

As the film continues Harald tries to make money by robbing a bank and hijacking a plane that's transporting money. When leaving the bank the gang takes a hostage, but they make the worst possible choice. Mille is a woman planning to commit suicide, so she doesn't cooperate with her captors. She wants them to kill her. Ludvig wants to kill her, of course, but when he finds out that she's suicidal he falls in love with her and asks her to marry him.

Are all Danish gangster films this good? Probably not. I wish they were.

In China they eat dogs (4½ Stars)

A tale of two brothers. Arvid Blixen is a loan adviser in a bank in Copenhagen. His brother Harald is a gangster who uses a restaurant as a legal front. The two live in the same city, but they haven't spoken for 10 years.

Arvid foils a bank robbery by hitting the robber over the head with a squash racket. He is celebrated in the press as a hero, but the day after the robbery the robber's girlfriend tells him that he has ruined their lives because the money was needed for artificial insemination. Arvid feels guilty about what he's done, so he enlists Harald's help in carrying out a new robbery to get money to help the couple. Then he decides to break the robber out of prison, also with Harald's help.

As a gangster film, this is incredible. The mix of crime and humour reminds me of "The Sopranos", which began shortly after the film. Harald Blixen also bears an uncanny resemblance to Tony Soprano in his appearance and mannerisms. The action is thrilling, and the humorous  scenes are never out of place.

I have two criticisms of the film. First of all, the final twist is so unexpected that it alienated me. It actually isn't a twist, it's an unexpected occurrence at the end. If you've seen the film you'll know what I mean. The other problem is the sound mixing. There is an extreme difference between the volume of the normal scenes with dialogue and the loud scenes with music and sound effects. This is a film that's impossible to listen to over headphones. If you turn the volume up loud enough to enjoy the quiet scenes you will be deafened by the music, gunshots and explosions.

The film was so successful at the box office, the biggest earning Danish film ever, that the studios decided to cash in by making a sequel. Unfortunately, all the main characters die at the end of this film -- sorry for the spoiler -- so the second film, "Old men in new cars", was made as a prequel.

In case you're wondering what the title has to do with the film, it's a statement of moral relativism. There is no absolute right or wrong. In China they eat dogs, which is considered horrific in Europe. And robbing a bank might be a good deed, depending on the motives.

The Salvation (4 Stars)

A Danish western? Is there such a thing? I don't know if any westerns have been made in Denmark before this, but if not "The Salvation" is a worthy film to kickstart the genre. It's slow and intense, coiled like a rattlesnake, before erupting into scenes of savage violence.

After Denmark lost a war to Germany (actually a coalition of Austria and Prussia) in 1864 the disillusioned Danish soldier Jon emigrates to America. After seven years of living alone, establishing a small homestead, Jon invites his wife and son to join him. They are both fridged on the stagecoach journey from the train station to Black Creek, the town nearest to Jon's homestead. After his wife is raped by two drunken cowboys they are murdered and thrown onto the road. Jon catches up with the stagecoach and takes revenge by shooting the men.

One of the men that Jon shoots is the brother of the gangster Delarue who demands protection money from the leaders of Black Creek. It's a strange little town. The town's undertaker is the mayor, and the town's priest is the sheriff. They're all terrified of Delarue and accept his demands. In retaliation for the death of his brother Delarue executes three of the townspeople and doubles the protection money until the killer is found.

Mads Mikkelsen is dark and broody in all of his films, so he was the ideal choice to play the lead role. I wouldn't say he's a good actor, he's very one-sided in his roles, but he's good at what he does. Also notable are Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Delarue, Jonathan Pryce as the undertaker and Eva Green as the mute wife of Delarue's brother. The film reproduces the style and atmosphere of spaghetti westerns without actually being a spaghetti western.

P. S. No, I don't know what the film's title has to do with the film.

Pusher (2 Stars)

Sometimes a film just doesn't live up to its reputation. I'd heard about this film for years, but I never got around to watching it until today. "The Best Danish gangster film ever", or so I heard.

Technically, it's not a gangster film. It's a film about a drug dealer in Copenhagen. He gets into debt with his supplier when he's forced to dispose of a large amount of heroin while being chased by the police. He's given two days to pay back the whole sum, about $40,000. The film is 20 years old, so it's probably worth about $100,000 in today's money.

The film was moderately entertaining, and I might have given it a better rating, but the film's ending annoyed me so much. Or rather the non-ending. It ended on a cliff-hanger, leading up to a final showdown that we never see. I hate films like that.

The film was remade in England in 2012, set in London instead of Copenhagen. That's unusual. Foreign films are usually remade in America. Maybe the English version is better.

There are better Danish gangster films. I recommend "In China they eat dogs" and "Old men in new cars", both of which star Kim Bodnia, the lead actor in "Pusher".

The Sinful Dwarf (1 Star)

What is it about dwarves in films? They're always evil, perverted, or at least downright creepy. I'm sure they can't all be so bad in real life.

This is a horrible film. I feel like I've wasted 90 minutes of my life, but at least I can do some good by writing this blog post to warn others against repeating my mistake.

A young couple, Peter and Mary, move into a cheap boarding house, where they intend to stay until Peter has found a good job. The owner is Lila Lashe, a lady who used to be a singer on stage and television until she was forced to retire by being scarred in a fire. Her son is Olaf, the dwarf in the poster above. Mary suspects something strange is happening in the house, but Peter mocks her. He should have listened to his wife's intuition. Olaf is kidnapping young women and locking them in the attic, keeping them docile by injecting them with heroin. Customers pay him to enter the attic to rape one or more of the women. Ugh.

The film is awful. If you really must watch it, don't say I didn't warn you.

Flame and Citron (5 Stars)

There's a limit to what you can know. At some point everyone has to choose what to believe. Faith is necessary, whether it's faith in a person or faith in God.

Flame and Citron were the codenames of two fighters in the Danish resistance during World War Two. Effectively they were hit men who acted like secret agents, assassinating their marks without any backup. They trusted each other, they trusted their comrades and they trusted their boss, a police solicitor who took his orders directly from the British army. For a few years Flame and Citron killed only Danish Nazis, who they considered traitors to their country. In 1944 they began to kill Germans, which led to harsh retaliation from the occupying forces.

What started out black and white for them becomes more and more murky as the film progresses. People that they know and love, people that they have placed their absolute trust in, might not be truthful in what they say. This is the conflict I'm speaking of. We can't function in life without trusting others. This applies in peacetime, but even more in war. Trusting the wrong person can cost me my life. Failing to trust the right person can be just as fatal.

But how is it with my moral responsibility? If I trust someone, and then this person incites me to do wrong, am I guilty? It's difficult to give a clear answer to that question. If a person asks me to bring him his coat, but the coat belongs to someone else, am I guilty of theft? In the eyes of the law I am, but morality and the law don't always give the same answer. If, on the other hand, a person or a religion asks me to kill someone, I need to examine my trust very closely before proceeding. If I decide that I have put my trust in the wrong person, I have to judge that person, asking whether he was deliberately misleading me. It can be traumatic for a person to realise that the religion he has believed in all his life is a thing of evil. A person in that state needs help and guidance, not criticism for what he's done. But if a person is unable or unwilling to judge his object of trust, he carries the full guilt for his actions. Legally and morally.