KRAFTIDIOTEN

Forget Westerns – there’s a brilliant Northern you’ll need to see: KRAFTIDIOTEN is a thriller with expert comical relief at exactly the right times. Nils is a Swedish immigrant in Norway, who has just been elected “citizen of the year” in his small village, way up north, where his job is to free the streets of snow and ice. When his son is found dead “with an overdose”, as the police claims, he doesn’t believe it. It must have been murder – and sure enough he finds evidence for his suspicion. So quiet, soft spoken Nils (Stellan Skarsgård, father of Alexander, yes) takes a slow but relentless vendetta for the death of his son, with his fists and the power of his snowplough. In one take he detours his monster lorry through a road called “Jotunheimvegen” in order to face his adversary head on. Jötunn are the ice giants of the nordic myth written down in the Edda. Very apt indeed: There are more monstrous machines at the grasp of Nils – even a thing that cuts trees, strips them of their branches and ultimately will serve to impale an expensive sports car.

At a certain point Nils quite unvoluntarily gets aided on his quest by a Serb godfather (played by Bruno Ganz), who lost his son to the same Norwegian drug baron, The Count (played by a brilliant Pål Sverre Hagen) – I had to look up religious symbols because of this one – but no spoilers, ok? IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE is the English title, which states the plot quite well – one after the other gets killed in vendetta and counter-vendetta. The original title, though, KRAFTIDIOTEN, stands for either “complete moron” or “power idiot”: a concept, which only Rune, the small son of The Count seems to have grasped: When bullied at school his father tells him to beat up his adversary – hard. “But then I’d be as stupid as him”, young Rune mutters under his breath. Wise words. He’ll be the only survivor, along with his Danish mom and … of course Stellan and Bruno who’ll ride into the sunset … on a snowplough, what else. [aartikel]B00PY6P68G:left[/aartikel]