10 Kilos: The Sharon Yitzhaky Story

Sharon Yitzhaky’s memoir is sort of the Israeli Midnight Express, except she was genuinely framed for drug trafficking—or rather left holding the bag by her predatory boyfriend. Somehow, she survived Boliva’s brutal Mira Flores prison. That was back in 1997. Just imagine what it would be like for an Israeli today, given the global explosion of Jew-hatred (calling it “anti-Zionism” does not make it any less ugly or hateful). Ironically, her blonde hair makes her stand out, as she becomes what she was framed for in Doron Eran’s 10 Kilos, adapted from Yitzhaky’s memoir, which releases in select theaters this Friday.

Estranged from her family, Yitzhaky thought she was partying with Roni, but he was actually using her as an oblivious mule. When he gets a tip the police are coming, he leaves her to take the fall. It was pretty clear she knew nothing and she never confesses to anything. Nevertheless, the corrupt cops and a DEA agent who technically isn’t supposed to be in-country, scapegoat her, to prove they are waging the war on drugs.

In a case of unintended consequences, druglord Amadeo DeSoto is impressed she didn’t break under interrogation, so he orders his enforcer inside the prison, Donna Maucha, to recruit Yitzhaky into the cartel. That allows Yitzhaky to protect her transsexual roommate Terry, and their adopted daughter Lena, who grew up in Mira Flores with her late junkie mother. Like most Israelis, Yitzhaky was tolerant and inclusive, even under extreme circumstances.

Indeed, screenwriters Avi Amar and Omri Rose’s adaptation just abounds with ironies. It is a heck of a true story, even though it is a bit predictable. The Bolivian government and the DEA take plenty of lumps, but the Israeli government comes out relatively unscathed, since they re never even mentioned. (However, Yitzhaky’s unhelpful family are not great national representatives.)

Regardless, Daniella Kertesz convincingly goes through the wringer, depicting Yitzhaky’s struggles with prison violence and addiction, as well as the stone-cold decisions she makes to survive. It is the kind of empowerment and redemption role that used to win Emmys for TV movie stars.

The Informer Finally Releases

Now that Pres. Trump is most likely exiting public service, will Republicans go back to supporting the FBI and Democrats revert to hating the Feds? It seems like we’ve all been switching back and forth every four years. Seriously, aren’t we due to swing back to our more natural defaults? Regardless, this film will not inspire much love for the Bureau on either side of the aisle, but of course its fiction. When senior agents burn their deep uncover mole for reasons of expediency, he does his best to burn them back in Andrea Di Stefano’s The Informer, which just released on VOD and in select theaters.

Pete Koslow is a decorated blue-collar veteran, who regrettably killed a biker in a bar brawl he did not start. He was also Polish, so Special Agent Erica Wilcox arranged for his speedy parole, once he ingratiated himself with the Polish mob. He thought he was at the end of the tunnel when he is sent to pick-up a substantial drug shipment, but the operation turns sour when he witnesses the murder of an undercover cop.

To “protect” him, the Polish syndicate orders him to violate his patrol, so he can take command of their prison drug trafficking operation. That is also fine with Wilcox and her boss Montgomery, because they would love to expose the gang’s prison network. However, when cowboy NYPD cop Edward Grens starts asking questions, the secret op becomes too hot to handle, so they throw Koslow to the wolves.

Covid and the CCP really did a number on this film’s release. It has probably been bumped two or three times, which must be frustrating for everyone invested in it. Honestly, it deserved to have a respectable theatrical opening, because it really not bad at all. The first hour or so is pretty conventional, but Koslow’s climatic last stand is tightly executed and tensely gripping.

Common also helps liven up the slow parts, because he is terrific as Grens (a name that is obviously a holdover from Roslund/Hellstrom’s Swedish source novel). It is a lot of fun to watch him charge through scenes like a bull in a china shop. Joel Kinnaman is one of those thesps who keep getting work even though they never seem to make a strong connection on-screen, but it should be stipulated he broods hard as Koslow and his size and intensity gives him strong credibility during the action sequences.

AHITH ’18: Amazon Hot Box

Call us traditionalists, but we don’t see the point in making a jungle women’s prison movie without Sybill Danning, even if it is a spoof. In this case, we are assuming the film in question is intended to be a send-up, but it is hard to tell from the tonal mish-mash. In any event, there is plenty of adult subject matter in James Anthony Bickert’s Amazon Hot Box (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, in San Francisco.

Poor American college student Penny came to fake-sounding Rattica as part of a conservation project, but she was scooped up during the government’s latest crack-down, along with Jade, as revolutionary sex-worker and Ebony, a revolutionary revolutionary (obviously a reference to Ebony, Ivory & Jade). She will be tormented by the Isla-inspired warden, Inga Von Krupp (with her short of stature sidekick) and the sadistic lesbian gang leader Val. As it happens, Penny is not the only one trapped there. Country singer Jett Bryant, playing a fictionalized drug-running meta-version of himself, has been appointed president, but is still very much a captive of the revolutionary government (from the previous revolution).

Man, where’s Roger Corman and Sid Haig when we need them? Maybe someone could make an amusing mash-up of their old Philippines-shot women-in-prison movies, but AHB is way too unfocused and scattershot. There are zombies in here and references to voodoo that really aren’t appropriate, considering Vodun is a real religion.

The biggest problem is AHB never feels like it was made by someone who loves the genre. In contrast, Adam Brooks & Matthew Kennedy’s The Editor (produced by Astron-6, who are not exactly known as guardians of good taste) is a spot-on satire of Italian giallo movies that actually becomes a not half-example of what it is skewering.

Nevertheless, Bryant has some nice moments with Tristan Risk (who also co-starred in The Editor), vamping it up something fierce as Val. Their late scenes together make us wish this film had been totally re-conceived to better feature them.

So, this exists—and it is not very good. AHB is just way too gory, in decidedly not funny ways, to cut it as a comedy. On the other hand, the film does not respect its secret agent and zombie elements enough for it to be a serviceable action or horror movie. However, cult movie fans will probably excuse away its shortcomings, because it wears its influences on its sleeve. Not recommended, Amazon Hot Box screens tomorrow (12/3), as part of this year’s AHITH.

Brawl in Cell Block 99: Vince Vaughn Goes Up the River

Evidently, most convicts sent to the big house fantasize about doing time in Austria’s luxurious looking Justice Center Leoben, but not Bradley “Don’t Call Him Brad” Thomas. He is determined to be transferred to the maximum-security, pre-war Red Leaf hell-prison, as soon as possible. He has his reasons in S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 (trailer here), which releases today on DVD.

Thomas was an ex-boxer trying to make and honest and peaceful living, but the recession forced him to return to work as runner for his drug lord pal Gil. He could tell something was wrong with their new Latin American connection, but he does his duty, accompanying two jittery thugs on a multi-million-dollar run. When things go sideways, Thomas wastes his cartel companions to save the drastically out-gunned cops. Of course, he is still sentenced to serious time, but at least it is a medium security facility.

On his second day, Thomas gets a visit from the mysterious “Placid Man” pretending to be his mega-pregnant wife Lauren’s OBGYN. In reality, he is a representative of the cartel, who holds him responsible for the loss of their shipment. They have kidnapped Lauren and will do awful things to her unborn baby unless he murders Christopher Bridge in Red Leaf’s hardcore Cell Block 99. To get there, he will have to be transferred twice, once from the more livable Franklin and then again into the subterranean dungeon. That will require a lot of bad behavior, but Thomas has the skills and the fortitude.

Brawl is one of the grittiest prison movies in years that deliberately evokes a 1970s vibe with its tunes and muscle cars. It doesn’t give you much faith in rehabilitation or the criminal justice system in general. Warden Tuggs and the Red Leaf guards definitely count as bad guys, but they are not even the worst of the worst. Regardless, just about everyone at Red Leaf deserves whatever comes their way, except for Thomas and maybe the inmate across the hall, who looks like Julian Richings.

About the last time Vince Vaughn had a stretch of serious dramas going was the late 1990s, when he appeared in the Malaysian prison drama, Return to Paradise. It was a good move for him to step away from wise-guy comedy and return to the prison setting, because Brawl is without question his best work in years. He is quietly intense, but his visceral physicality says plenty.

Don Johnson adds some southern fried villainy as the sadistic warden. He has probably reached the point of type-casting, but to his credit, Tuggs is less cliched and more realistic than his racist plantation owner in Django Unchained or the Joe Arpaio caricature in Machete (but sadly, he is nowhere near as flamboyant as good old Jim Bob Luke in Cold in July). Jennifer Carpenter also adds a bit depth and dimension as Lauren Thomas, which is impressive considering she mostly serves as the hostage-victim. For extra bonus points, Udo Kier brings his eccentric movie magic as the Placid Man.

Both Brawl and Zahler’s previous film Bone Tomahawk clocked in over two hours, which is ridiculous in both cases. Seriously, he has a good handle on genre elements, but he needs to work with a more assertive editor. Brawl is particularly slow out of the gates, but it pays off with more interest than Tomahawk. Recommended for fans of prison movies and 1970s throwbacks, Brawl in Cell Block 99 is now available on DVD and BluRay.

HK Cinema at SFFS ‘17: With Prisoners

In America, budding criminals are much better off if they are tried and convicted as minors rather than adults. It is the exact opposite in Hong Kong. If this sounds perverse to you, many surviving youthful offender would readily agree. Their experiences with HK’s “short sharp shock” juvenile justice system are dramatized in Wong Kwok-kuen’s expose-like narrative, With Prisoners (trailer here), which screens during the San Francisco Film Society’s annual Hong Kong Cinema series.

Fan is a self-described “thug,” who is cocky enough to lay a smack-down on an off-duty cop during a fair and square bar fight. However, the abuse meted out at the Sha Tsui Detention Center will break him in a matter of days. Having survived one suicide attempt, Fan will knuckle down, becoming a model prisoner, by following the advice of Sharpie, a veteran re-offender. The older “boy” (prisoners as old as twenty-five are incarcerated at Sha Tsui) deliberately returned, to avenge a friend’s murder, which the guards dressed up as a suicide.

Most likely it was the work of the brutal senior guard Gwai, or one of his vicious comrades. Only the idealistic Ho and world weary veteran officer (rarely seen in the film) are beyond suspicion. Unfortunately, the soul-deadening violence of Sha Tsui is poisoning Ho’s relationship with his wife Samantha, a former junkie, whom he saved during his social-worker days.

There is plenty of socially conscious muckraking in With Prisoners. Realism certainly was not a problem, given the presence of many former inmates in the large supporting cast, including Mak Yee Ma, making an extraordinary debut as Sharpie. However, Wong and co-writer Wong Chi-bong include some more traditional crime drama elements to help pull viewers through, mostly revolving around the death of Sharpie’s friend and his subsequent pursuit of payback.

The quietly incendiary Mak is a heck of a discovery in Prisoners, but up-and-coming Neo Yau Hawk-sau also stretches his chops and range quite nicely as Fan. Kelvin Kwan’s is admirably earnest, but nobody can withstand the withering voltage of Lee Kwok-Lun’s work as the casually sadistic yet eerily charismatic Gwai. What makes it so scary and potent is the apparent effortlessness of his cruelty and how little it seems to affect him. It is a performance that ranks up with R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket.

Western viewers might be surprised by the complete absence of homosexual references or overtones in Prisoners, but this is a Hong Kong movie, so it is subject to homophobic Communist Party censorship. At least the film’s characters need not worry about sexual assault in addition to torture and murder. Regardless, the film never feels whitewashed, since there are plenty of violent scenes that will indeed trouble the faint of heart. Recommended for fans of prison films and reformist issue-oriented movies, With Prisoners screens this Sunday (10/1) as part of the SFFS’s Hong Kong Cinema.

Jacques Becker’s Le Trou

Granted, security technology has advanced tremendously over the last fifty odd years, but if you would like to break out of prison, you can probably still pick up some useful pointers from Jacques Becker’s final film. Inspired by a 1947 escape attempt from Santé Prison, the gritty caper film remained scrupulously accurate, thanks to Becker’s co-screenwriter José Giovanni (a.k.a. Joseph Damiani) and co-star Jean Keraudy, both of whom were participants in the notorious incident (and not as prison guards). Whether they know it or not, scores of subsequent prison-break movies owe a debt to Becker’s hardboiled Le Trou (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York, at Film Forum.

This is a story of men among men. Whether Claude Gaspard belongs in their company is a debatable point. He formerly traveled in higher social circles than the rest of his inmates after marrying up. Gaspard can indeed be ingratiating, perhaps too much so. After catching him in a compromising position with her seventeen-year-old sister, his wife tried to administer some shotgun retribution, but instead she was the one inconveniently injured (not seriously) in the ensuing scuffle. At least that is Gaspard’s side of the story and he is sticking with it—for all the good it will do him.

Due to repairs in his wing of the prison, Gaspard is transferred to the cell holding Manu Borelli, Geo Cassid, Roland Darban, and Vossellin, affectionately known as the “Monsignor” due to his seniority. Gaspard is immediately impressed by their square-jawed toughness and their salty camaraderie. Eagerly desiring to fit in, Gaspard automatically joins in when his new cellmates reveal they are planning an escape. Since they have already laid the groundwork, they cannot afford to wait for Gaspard to be transferred back. Plus, they will now have an extra hand to help dig.

The general plan is to break through their concrete floor into the prison cellar, thereby gaining access to the service tunnels, where they will dig through to the Paris sewers—and then on to freedom. It sounds crazy, but it is amazing how smoothly they proceed through the early stages. However, the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” principle of game theory will inevitably rear its ugly head.

Again, for the sake of realism, Becker cast five non-professional actors, including Keraudy, as the fateful cellmates. The other four would continue to enjoy successful film and television careers, especially Philippe Leroy, who is indeed a flinty, hard-nosed standout as Borelli, whom Gaspard idolizes above all others. However, it is rather baffling Keraudy never made another picture because he is terrific as the brooding Darban. Michel Constantin and Raymond Meunier nicely balance them as the brutish mother’s boy Cassid and the comparatively garrulous Monsignor. Yet, Marc Michel gives perhaps the most cringily tragic performance as Gaspard, the desperate approval-seeker and borderline sociopath.

Crisply executed and taut with suspense, Le Trou is a dynamite caper film. After watching it, viewers will feel like they also have a prisoner or guard’s familiarity with Santé Prison. You can just sense the accuracy and attention to detail, even if you’ve never done time. Very highly recommended, the fresh, clean 4K restoration of Le Trou opens this Wednesday (6/28) at Film Forum.

The Prison: Hard Time in Korea

The recidivism rate for this prison is darn near 100%, especially if you are fortunate enough to be quartered in Jung Ik-ho’s block. His men start re-offending almost right away, but their incarceration gives them an airtight alibi. It is a heck of a place for a disgraced cop to serve his sentence, but he happens to have a particular set of skills that will be of use to Jung in Na Hyun’s simply-titled The Prison (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

A lot of his fellow prisoners are here because of Song Yoo-gun, awkwardly including the top dog of his prison cell. He will take some harsh beatings, but he will quickly develop a survival strategy. It immediately becomes apparent the corrupt warden is not really running the show here. Jung is. He and his men live well in their cell block, where they plot outside jobs to keep the dirty money flowing. By interceding in situations where none of Jung’s other men are crazier enough to act, Song ingratiates himself with the non-aligned gangster. In fact, he quickly becomes one of Jung’s favorites, but he also has a secret you can probably guess.

Those who are familiar with the Well Go USA catalog might wonder if they are starting to repeat themselves, since Erik Matti excellent thriller On the Job starts with a similar premise, but Na Hyun takes it in a very different direction. Like just about every recent Korean thriller, Prison is preoccupied with issues of governmental corruption. Granted, Song has a dramatic backstory motivating him, but unlike Matti’s film, there is absolutely no attention given to the home front. Frankly, there is not a single woman to be seen throughout the film and only one is briefly heard over the phone (so some things about prison life are still a bummer).

On the other hand, there is plenty of cartilage-crunching action. Previously best known as the screenwriter of crowd-pleasers like Forever the Moment, Na Hyun gets his money’s worth with his directorial debut, going big with a truly explosive climax. The two lead antagonists also hold up their end, generating all kinds of hardboiled heat. Frankly, it is great fun watching the hateful-yet-respectful chemistry that develops between Kim (Gangnam Blues) Rae-won and Han (Forbidden Quest) Suk-kyu as Song and Jung, respectively. It is also great fun to watch Lee (Inside Men) Kyoung-young, a character actor who seems to specialize in crooked politicians, do his thing as correctional department head Bae (who ironically happens to be somewhat honest this time around, but is still unrepentantly arrogant).

There is no question The Prison can hang with Inside Men and the most obvious comp film, A Violent Prosecutor, but in many ways, it is grittier and less sentimental. At the risk of sounding fannish, it is exactly the kind of film that reminds us why we dig Korean action movies and thrillers. Recommended with enthusiasm, The Prison opens this Friday (3/31) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Son of a Gun: Ewen McGregor Goes Gangster

There is a long cinematic tradition of gangsters and gunmen who were short of stature, but long on presence. Scottish Ewen McGregor follows in the footsteps of less than towering giants like Edward G. Robinson as hardboiled Australian lifer Brendan Lynch, delivering a batch of rather charismatic villainy in Julius Avery’s Son of a Gun (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

It is unclear whether J.R. and his feeble excuse for a moustache will survive prison, but his roommate is a certain goner. Attracting the unwelcomed attention of a hirsute biker rape gang, J.R. makes a deal for protection from Lynch and his associates. In return, once he is paroled, the kid will arrange the details of Lynch’s escape and serve as his management trainee assistant thereafter. Frankly, J.R. could use some direction, so this arrangement is win-win for him. Then he gets an eyeful of Tasha, one of the Russian women “kept” by Lennox, the Euro crime-boss, who finances Lynch’s operations.

Naturally, Lennox has a job for Lynch once he is at-large: an honest to gosh gold mine. The logistics will be a mess, but Lynch and his cronies need the money and are itching for action. After all, what could go wrong, aside from that thing with Tasha and Lynch’s generally erratic nature?

Son is a pretty entertaining little shoot ‘em up, almost entirely thanks to McGregor. Grizzled but wiry, he has the presence of a coiled spring, ready to launch at any moment. He seriously projects a sense of potential danger, making up for his lifeless appearance in Ossage County. Unfortunately, Brenton Thwaites could not possibly be any duller, truly fading into the background as the dumb and inexperienced J.R. Frankly, it is still unclear whether Alicia Vikander will really crossover. She seems uncomfortable vamping it up as a femme fatale, but her Tasha has enough intelligence and poise to totally out-class Thwaites.

Regardless, when Avery is getting down to criminal business, Son works pretty well. The escape sequence is impressively mounted and might just give other potential accomplices ideas. Likewise, the big heist also qualifies as well staged bedlam. However, during quieter times, the film is conspicuously over-written. Avery drives a bit about chimps and bonobo monkeys (decide which best represents your nature, padawan) so deeply into the ground, you’d think he was drilling for oil.

Son is never really surprising, per se, but it executes its crosses and double-crosses with admirable energy. Nobody is slacking off here, except maybe Thwaites’ facial hair, but McGregor truly takes possession of the film. We really haven’t seen him stretch out in this direction before, but he pulls it off. Recommended overall for fans of prison-heist-noir hybrids, Son of a Gun opens this Friday (1/23) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

Youth in Revolt: King of Devil’s Island

The Bastøy Boys Home was no Boys Town. Neither was the governor any sort of Father Flanagan. Yet, both were considered above reproach until a violent uprising amongst the student-inmates shocked Norway. Their doomed revolt and the events that precipitated it are vividly dramatized in Marius Holst’s King of Devil’s Island (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

In 1915, the Christian progressive zeal for reform was evidently as alive in Norway as it was in America. On the surface, Bastøy perfectly fit preconceived notions of how juvenile offenders should be handled. Situated on an island in a fjord off the Oslo coast, it was pretty much winter year-round in Bastøy. That made escape through the icy waters essentially impossible. It also allowed plenty of time for character-building outdoor labor and moral instruction. However, the trustees were unaware of the secret corruption at the institution.

Governor Bestyreren suspects there is a reason why Bråthen has remained at Bastøy for so long. Unfortunately, since the cruel house-father is aware he has been skimming funds to support his young demanding wife, the governor takes a see-no-evil approach with his tightly wound subordinate. This will prove a wee bit short-sighted when two new boys arrive.

Rumored to be a murderer, Erling (a.k.a. C-19) is like the Randle Patrick McMurphy of Bastøy. Rebellious by nature, he opens contemplates escape, longing to return to a life at sea. Also arriving that day is Ivar (a.k.a. C-5), a weaker boy, ill-equipped to deal with either Bastøy’s harsh environment or Bråthen’s inappropriate attention. Tragically, circumstances escalate to a point that pushes head boy Olav (C-1) to the end of his tether.

Island could be thought of as a Norwegian Lord of the Flies, except it is rather more complex than that. We can see the governor maintain what we might now call plausible deniability, rather than behave as a hissably nefarious villain. Likewise, Erling and Olav are far from paragons of virtue, but they are still engaging young protagonists who are quite believably pushed too far.

Indeed, Holst maintains an admirably firm hand on the rudder at all times. Though the events might suggest wider allegorical meaning, he keeps the film grounded in the characters’ reality. Likewise, he never lets matters degenerate into a reign of terror, in any sense, even when the Norwegian Navy arrives to put down the insurrection (which astonishingly, really did happen).

Though he risks becoming permanently typecast as the unjust authority figure, Stellan Skarsgård brings instant credibility to Island as the compromised governor. He clearly knows how to play the heavy, while maintaining a sense of the character’s humanity. Yet, it is the film’s two young more or less co-leads who really deliver the goods. As C-1 and C-19 respectively, Trond Nilssen and Benjamin Helstad are pretty darn intense and compulsively watchable.

A fine period production from stem to stern, Island will make suggestible viewers feel chilly and damp at times. Holst and screenwriter Dennis Magnusson also deserves further credit for not harping on the religious hypocrisy of the governor and his clueless board of directors. Instead, it seems they fully understood the dramatic potential of this remarkable historical episode and set about telling it rather straightforwardly and compellingly. Recommended beyond the established audience for foreign films, Island opens this Friday (11/18) in New York at the Cinema Village and the San Francisco Film Society will present it for a one week run in early January (1/6-1/12).

The Danish Oz: R

It is pretty rotten being the new guy, particularly in prison, especially when they’re expecting you. Survival will not be pretty for Rune as he lives a sub-human day-to-day existence in co-writer-directors Tobias Lindholm & Michael Noer’s Danish prison drama, R (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Even in liberal Scandinavia (wherein Denmark leans a tad to the right, relatively), prison life is basically like Oz. However, Lindholm & Noer spare viewers the sexual assaults, compensating instead with plenty of violence, into which R(une) is immediately initiated. The Nordic gang led by Sune and his younger lieutenant Mason orders the new inmate to attack “The Albanian” in an American History X fashion or suffer a similar fate himself. Having no choice, Rune complies, over and over again, becoming the gang’s gopher and domestic servant.

Filmed on location at the decommissioned Horsens State Prison, Lindholm & Noer present a world ruled by the law of the jungle, where the guards are ever-present, but largely irrelevant to the power games playing out within the prisoner population. In their ruthlessly politically incorrect environment, the Nordic and Muslim prisoners bitterly despise each other, but are still willing to maintain an illicit drug trade. This initially presents an opportunity for Rune. Though the prison is largely segregated, he is able to devise a delivery method with R(ashid), his secularly inclined Muslim co-worker in the prison kitchen. Temporarily, both R’s enjoy greater status and living conditions as a result, but Rune still carries the baggage of his violent actions.

If you don’t already know how the inmates hide their drugs, I don’t want to be the one to explain it to you. R will make it plenty clear. It is gritty stuff, never shying away from the muck of prison life. In fact, the film is so brutally honest, it throws viewers a considerable third act change-up. Yet, it makes perfect sense within the context of prison reality.

Pilou Asbæk’s disciplined matter-of-fact lead performance lends the film considerable credibility. He is a hard kid to love, but good golly he sullenly shoulders more than his share of abuse. Indeed, it is not sympathy he elicits, so much as absolute exhaustion. As the other R, Dulfi Al-Jabouri is mostly stuck with sidekicky duties in the first half, but he has some nicely turned soul searching moments down the stretch. While as far as movie thugs go, Roland Møller’s Mason has to be one of the realest and skuzziest you’re ever going to not want to meet.

Frankly, R makes Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet look like a fairy tale. Remarkably, it does so without any dirty bits, unless you count the pervasive graphic violence, mental cruelty, scatological detail, and overt racist and sexist discourse. Still, there is no sex, as befits Denmark’s Calvinist roots. Undeniably a film of visceral impact, R is also smartly executed. Viewers should understand full well though, no punches will be pulled when it opens this Friday (6/17) in New York at the Quad Cinemas.