Why you can trust 12DOVE
When his son is murdered by drug smugglers, Stellan Skarsgård’s snowplower pulls a Charlie Bronson on the Oslo underworld. Hans Petter Moland’s slapstick Nordic noir is pitched between The Counsellor ’s straight-faced fatalism and the tongue-in-cheek torture porn of Big Bad Wolves , with all the tonal issues that implies.
After bothering to imbue its characters with human quirks (baddie Pal Sverre Hagen might be cinema’s angriest vegan), it massacres them without mercy. It’s not without its moments, but more comic dexterity and less brute force would have made a less choppy watch.
Matt Glasby is a freelance film and TV journalist. You can find his work on Total Film - in print and online - as well as at publications like the Radio Times, Channel 4, DVD REview, Flicks, GQ, Hotdog, Little White Lies, and SFX, among others. He is also the author of several novels, including The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film and Britpop Cinema: From Trainspotting To This Is England.
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