Nightwatch: Demons are Forever, on Shudder

Serial killers are beyond reform or redemption—but that’s a good thing for movie producers. When a serial killer film is successful, they can always make a sequel, even in Denmark. If you haven’t seen the original Nightwatch or the American remake (both helmed by Ole Bornedal), forget the name Peter Wormer. It seemed Martin Bork and Kalinka Martens survived the killer at the end of the 1994 film, but they never escaped the post-traumatic stress. Unfortunately, Wormer also survived, so he most likely returns to his old ways in Bornedal’s Nightwatch: Demons are Forever, which premieres Friday on Shudder.

Despite the promise of a happy marriage, Martens was paranoid Wormer would return for her and Bork, she took her own life several years ago. Maybe in a future sequel, we will learn she was really murdered, but Bornedal does go there yet. Consequently, Bork has been a pill-popping shell of himself, who is largely dependent on his college student daughter Emma (played by the director’s daughter, Fanny Leander Bornedal), rather than vice versa.

Obviously, it is an extraordinarily bad idea, but Emma takes the same night watchman job at the morgue where her father worked in the first film. Her parents never told her about the incident with Wormer, so Emma hopes to learn more at the infamous site. However, her family investigation quickly leads her to the state mental hospital, where the blind and supposedly feeble Wormer remains in custody. Her inquiry takes on great urgency when a copycat killer starts gruesomely butchering Bork’s old friends, using Wormer’s old scalping M.O.

Fans of the original will be happy to see Bornedal got the old gang back together again—at least the characters who are still living, including Bork’s somewhat sleazy pal, Jens Arnkiel. The original Nightwatch was a breakout film for both the director and lead actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, so it makes sense Bornedal’s screenplay explores the notion of legacy. Instead of just bringing back the old-timers for fan-mollifying cameos, Demons are Forever digs deeply into the long-term psychological distress experienced by the survivors and how it shaped their offspring—including Wormer’s (just who that might be would be telling, but it is easy to guess).

Powder Keg: The 2015 Copenhagen Terror Attacks

During the immediate aftermath of the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shootings, the entire world recoiled in horror, rightly believing the principles of civil society were under assault. All that outrage and resolve evaporated in a few weeks, so the similar February 14^th and 15^th shootings in Copenhagen went troublingly under-reported and under-analyzed. However, they still left a mark on Danish society, especially for director-screenwriter Ole Christian Madsen and co-screenwriter Lars Kristian Andersen, who had worked with one of the victims. They dramatize those hateful crimes and the days immediately preceding them in Powder Keg (a.k.a. The Day We Died), which is now available on VOD.

Rico is a Copenhagen SWAT officer, whose job-related injuries make his continued service uncertain. Dan Uzan is a Jewish-Tunisian immigrant, currently underemployed as a synagogue security guard, because his last name turns off prospective employers. Finn Nørgaard is a documentary producer, who has been motivated to embrace free speech activism by the Charlie Hebdo mass murders. Omar El-Hussein is a Danish-born street-gang thug, radicalized by Islamists in prison, who has been temporarily releases while his unlikely appeal is pending. (It should be obvious which one Madsen and Andersen knew).

It is also pretty clear how their lives will intersect, but the way Madsen and Andersen meticulously weave together the strands is surprisingly riveting. There is an inescapable inevitability to the narrative (in media res framing), but the vibe of high tragedy compensates for the lack of suspense. By far, the real-life characters of Uzan and Nørgaard, as well as the fictionalized composite Rico are much more compelling characters than El-Hussein. The terror-shooter is not portrayed as a cartoony cliché, but the film makes it clear he choses the path of violence and extremism.

We have seen burnt-out cops before, but Nikolaj Coster-Waldau brings a lot of depth and flawed humanity to Rico. This really stands out as some of his best work. In contrast, Jakob Oftebro, who is also pretty recognizable from Scandinavian imports like Kon-Tiki and 1864, is basically along for the ride as his partner Jan.

Exit Plan: The Hotel of Your Final Departure

People check into the assisted suicide hotel, but they don’t check out. That is the whole idea, yet one guest is surprised to discover the place might be run by killers. Nonetheless, you have to admire the guts of any distributor willing to pick up a thriller that could diminish viewer enthusiasm for euthanasia. The staff of the Hotel Aurora is indeed determined to carry about business with Scandinavian efficiency in Jonas Alexander Arnby’s Exit Plan, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Max Isaksen is so boring, he isn’t even leading a life a quiet desperation, until he is diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor. After the insurance adjustor investigates the claim of a woman whose husband apparently availed himself of the Hotel Aurora’s services, Isaksen books a room for himself. However, he never really shares a proper moment of closure with his wife Lærke, which weighs heavily on him. Isaksen even starts having second thoughts, even though the Aurora staff discourages such thinking.

In some ways, Exit Plan is like The Suicide Club, with a pinch of David Lynch and décor courtesy of the Danish Design Store. This is one frosty, Nordic film that never caters to conventional thriller audiences. Yet, it is its vibe of soul-deadening alienation and profound existential implications are exactly what make it so unsettling. No matter how you feel about euthanasia, you never want to visit the Aurora.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau drabs himself down admirably as the reserved Isaksen, who could almost pass for a Dickensian scrivener. It is not just a physical thing, even though the 1970’s era glasses and moustache render the Game of Thrones star nearly unrecognizable. He also projects a sense of deep sadness.

De Palma’s Domino

Denmark is relatively hawkish when it comes to the War on Terror—not just for a Scandinavian country, but also by European standards. Perhaps that is why Salah Al-Din, an Islamist terrorist mastermind has been focusing on Danish targets. A former assassin with a grudge against Al-Din is out to kill him and his associates, but for copper Christian Toft, the enemy of his enemy is not his friend in Brian De Palma’s Domino—yes, that Brian De Palma, which opens tomorrow in select cities.

Thanks to a flirtatious early morning after a long night of passion, Toft leaves his gun on his bed-stand before responding to what he and his partner Lars Hansen assume to be a routine domestic disturbance. Instead, they run smack into Ezra Tarzi leaving the scene of the crime. He had carved up a bodega owner, whose flat is filled to the brim with explosives and general terrorism paraphernalia. Alas, Tarzi gravely wounds Hansen while escaping from custody, but he does not make a clean getaway.

Instead, he is captured by the CIA, who are happy to aid his quest for vengeance, supplying him with intel and further hardball motivation—as if he needed it. Tarzi already has Al-Din’s YouTube beheading videos of his brother for that. Initially, the Copenhagen cops erroneously believe Tarzi is still with Al-Din’s Dahesh cell, so Toft assumes Tarzi can lead them straight to the terrorist, which is still mostly true.

By all reports, Domino was deeply troubled throughout every stage of production, finally pushing De Palma to largely disavow the film. However, it still shows flashes of the old De Palma magic. He does his usually Hitchcockian thing, while Pino Donaggio, his regular score composer, reaches back into his Bernard Herrmann bag of tricks—and it works more often than you would know from the rest of the reviews so far. In fact, the big, pivotal scene in a bullfighting stadium (the third act shifts to Spain, probably for tax credit reasons) is genuinely vintage De Palma, up there with the Battleship Potemkin homage in The Untouchables.

As Toft, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is a serviceable lead, who looks sufficiently convincing in his action scenes. Guy Pearce practically sleeps through the film playing Machiavellian CIA agent Joe Martin (a case of been there, done that, if ever there was). Søren Malling is largely under-utilized as Hansen, whereas Paprika Steen is completely wasted as his wife Hanne. Unfortunately, Carice van Houten is badly offkey as Toft’s unofficial new partner Alex Boe. However, Eriq Ebouaney is a real standout as the steely Tarzi.

Domino is a grubby, Eurotrashy film that struggles to alienate its core audience with kneejerk moral equivalencies. Yet, it still has moments of grand suspense. It is not De Palma’s worst film, not by a long shot (hello Passion and Redacted). The question is whether it is a last gasp or a harbinger of a final masterwork to come (as John Frankenheimer’s under-appreciated Dead Bang and Fourth War were to Ronin). Sort of recommended for fans of ticking time-bomb-thrillers, Domino opens tomorrow (5/31) at the AMC Rolling Hills in the LA-area and releases day-and-date on iTunes.

1,000 Times Good Night: Getting the Shot, No Matter the Cost

Yes, women have also become homicide-suicide bombers in Afghanistan. An Irish photojournalist with the hints of a French accent has the photos to prove it. In fact, she could not stop taking them, contributing to a premature detonation while she was still within the general blast area. She survives, but the damage done to her family unit will be harder to patch-up in Erik Poppe’s 1,000 Times Good Night (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

If you find it problematic to compulsively document (and consequently somewhat fetishize) a terrorist bomber’s final hours, than congratulations. You had the appropriate human response. On the other hand, Rebecca argues she is bearing witness to the inhumanity of the world, but at some point bearing witness will come to resemble abetting through inaction.

Good Night’s opening sequence consists of some truly provocative, visceral stuff, but to really understand it, you also have to see the symmetrically related conclusion. Ultimately, the film forces Rebecca to confront the ethics of her calling in gut-wrenching, soul-churning terms. However, to reach that point, we have to slog through some just okay family drama.

When Rebecca is finally discharged from the hospital, she has clearly lost a step physically and might be gun-shy for the first time in her career. Her marine-biologist husband Marcus is ready to divorce her and their daughters are emotionally reeling from the near permanent loss of their often absent mother. Frankly, the youngster bounces back faster than moody teenaged Steph, perhaps because the older girl better understood the circumstances. For the sake of her family, Rebecca resolves to retire, but maybe she can be convinced to take Steph on a bonding tour of a Kenyan refugee camp, because it’s absolutely, positively safe as houses.

If Juliette Binoche ever gave a bad performance, the sun might start orbiting the earth. In fact, she is admirably restrained, given the horrors her character witnesses and the bodily and spiritual wounds she suffers (had Meryl Streep overacted the part in her place, she would have been rending her garments and howling at the moon). Instead, Binoche smartly and convincingly portrays a woman forced to emotionally blinker herself, for survival’s sake.

While the mother-daughter melodrama becomes tiresome over time, Lauryn Canny is still quite impressive as Steph. Likewise, Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau does his best to scratch out something as the long suffering hubby. U2 fans should also keep their eyes open for Larry Mullen, Jr, who is perfectly respectable as Tom, a friend of the family.

Good Night is an uneven film, but when it does connect, it is with a haymaker. You have to keep with it, but it is worth it if you do. Recommended on balance, 1,000 Times Good Night opens this Friday (10/24) in New York, at the Quad Cinema.

Blond Noir: Headhunters

Right now, Norway’s economy is a lot like our own.  There are way more job-seekers than open positions to fill.  At such times, if a recruiter sends you on an interview, you go, even though you might be leaving a few stray valuable objects d’art lying about your home unguarded.  That is Roger Brown’s racket, but it turns unexpectedly deadly in Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York and also screens this afternoon as part of the 2012 San FranciscoInternational Film Festival.

Brown is a man slight of stature, married to his bombshell wife, Diana.  Suffering from a king-sized inferiority complex, he has allowed them to live beyond their means by burglarizing the homes of his executive search clients.  With his house of cards on the brink of collapse, Brown’s prayers appear to be answered in the person of Claes Greve.  Not only is the former tech CEO the perfect candidate for a plum position Brown must fill, he also owns a genuine Rubens painting of rather dodgy providence.  Win-win, right? 

However, when Brown starts to suspect the younger man and his wife are carrying-on an affair behind his back, he sabotages Greve’s campaign for the position.  At this point, Greve reacts more forcefully than Brown anticipates.  Mouse, meet cat.

Headhunters is quite a nifty one-darned-thing-after-another thriller.  Tyldum has a good handle on the material, constantly ratcheting-up the tension, but periodically using black comedy to release some steam.  In his hands, the frequent twists are entertaining rather than forced or exhausting. 

Tyldum also has a nice looking cast to focus on.  Especially bankable is the presence of Game of Thrones alumnus Nikolaj Coster-Wladau, now world famous for playing Lena Headey’s brother (and other things), Ser Jaime Lannister, here perfectly cast as Greve.  As Diana Brown, former model Synnøve Macody Lund certainly looks the part, but she also has some kind of nice dramatic moments as well.  In the lead, Aksell Hennie’s Brown holds the film together while coming to grief quite effectively.

Based on Norwegian mystery writer Jo Nesbø’s first book outside his bread-and-butter series, Headhunters engages in some of the same far-fetched anti-corporate humbug undermining so many recent domestic crime dramas.  However, Tyldum keeps the roller-coaster loop-de-looping at such breakneck speed, it is not so distracting.  Definitely a dark but thoroughly enjoyable exercise in skullduggery, Headhunters is easily recommended when it screens today as part of this year’s SFIFF and opens theatrically this Friday (4/27) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.