Small towns in movies almost always come in four flavors: quaint, quirky, creepy, and cruddy. The Danish town here looks quaint, but turns out to be creepy, much like the one in The White Ribbon. In both movies, an outsider is the central character. Here, a new marshal (Jakob Cedergren), sent from the big city (i.e., Copenhagen), encounters diffident townsfolk who seem to be hiding secrets. A woman casually mentions some disappearances, like the local bike shop owner. And she tells him that her husband has beaten her, but still she returns to the man, who seems to be feared by everyone. Repeatedly, the marshal is told that he doesn’t know how things are done in the tiny town. It’s all mysterious in the manner of beginnings to a certain type of horror film, and I half expected the town’s mysteries to be explained via murderous ghosts, or aliens in human bodies. (A somewhat similar beginning begets comic mayhem in Hot Fuzz.)
But this is a suspense drama, not a horror film, and as much about the marshal character as about the character of small towns. It’s no allegory, like The White Ribbon, but a smaller-focused (and lower-budget) film along the lines of the Coen Brothers’ debut, Blood Simple, with maybe a hint of David Lynch in his less-outré moments. Director/co-writer Henrik Ruben Genz, who adapted a novel by Erling Jepsen, is no newcomer, but this is his first film to be released in US theaters. He also plans to remake the movie in English. I’m thinking Jason Lee, who bears a mild resemblance to Cedergren, would do as the lead. In any case, one thing that should not be changed is the ending, in which justice is served in a different way than I was expecting.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/1/10
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