Movies We Like
In China They Eat Dogs
Dir: Lasse Spang Olsen, 1999. Starring: Kim Bodina, Dejan Cukic. Foreign. Language: Danish, English, Serbian, German.
Arvid (Dejan Cukic) is a pushover who can't seem to find his way in life. He works at a bank and lives with his girlfriend, Hanne. The two get into an argument over breakfast because Arvid donated 800 crowns to a church fund—money that Hanne wanted to use for shopping. As he tries to move past the dispute unscathed she makes him out to be a boring purist who's trying to save the world.
We then jump to Richard (Lester Wiese), a traveling American who settles into a seat at a bar and has a mysterious meeting with Arvid at noon. The bartender and a patron start to chat with him. With two hours to spare until Arvid's arrival, he recaps the recent series of events that have put Arvid in a delicate situation—a man who up until 12 days prior Richard had never heard of.
The rest of the film is a series of flashbacks leading up to Arvid's meeting with Richard. Following his argument with Hanne, Arvid went to work and encountered a disgruntled customer who decided to help himself to a “loan” with a shotgun. Tired of standing on the sidelines, Arvid strikes the man with a racket and puts an end to the sloppy robbery. His employers decide to reward him for his heroic efforts and send him home early with a paid vacation. When he gets to his apartment he discovers that his girlfriend has left him and taken all of their furniture. A woman comes to his door and starts to attack him, claiming that she's the girlfriend of the man he interfered with at the bank and that they needed the money to try and get in vitro fertilization. Out on the street, a crummy rock band attacks him on the grounds of being a hero.
The onslaught of abuse and the guilt of coming between a couple's happiness becomes too much to bear. He reaches out to his estranged brother Harald (Kim Bodina). Harald is an ex-con who runs a restaurant and has a few screws loose. He asks for his help in robbing an armored truck with the intention of giving the money to the robber and his girlfriend. Using two of Harald's cooks (Nikolaj Lie Kaas & Tomas Villum Jensen) and his dishwasher Vuk (Brian Patterson), an illegal immigrant with family ties to a mob, they come up with a ludicrous plan of action. The heist leaves two people dead and Vuk injured. Despite the mess they've made, Arvid moves on and plans to break the bank robber out of jail, but first they have to answer to Vuk's relatives who are upset about his new injuries. Somewhere along his psychotic journey to set things right everything goes wrong. With their many complications and interference from others, the body count rises. But once Arvid realizes that he's just as crazy as, if not more than, his brother, he starts to use his new resources to get back at those who mistreated him.
I was half expecting this to be a revenge/heist movie with lots of violence and nerve-wracking excitement. Since it's from Denmark, I was automatically prepared to see a movie like Pusher, which also stars Kim Bodina and was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising). It is a movie about several heists and a mousy man's revenge, but done in the way of Pulp Fiction and other dark action comedies. The foolish mistakes they make and the effortlessness of their destruction is what made the movie so funny. There were times when it plays like a group of teenagers who get their hands on guns and try to achieve something ballsy. Some of it even reminds me of slapstick. There's a scene where Harald is trying to get Arvid to stand up for himself and teach one of his attackers a lesson. He gives him an automatic handgun with the intention of letting him injure one of the men at close range. But, since Arvid has never handled an automatic weapon before, he accidentally riddles an entire room full of people with bullets. The whole movie has this kind of satire where outrageous crimes are intensified by dopey mistakes. And like a good Tarantino flick, it's one of those movies that has a lot of offensive humor. Where Straw Dogs sort of rewards its protagonist by giving him gusto and respectability, this movie turns a chump into a trigger-happy buffoon. The ending is hands down one of the most unsuspecting, funniest and offensive endings to an action movie, period. This film is recommended to those who like action, dark comedy, and heists that go terribly wrong.
We then jump to Richard (Lester Wiese), a traveling American who settles into a seat at a bar and has a mysterious meeting with Arvid at noon. The bartender and a patron start to chat with him. With two hours to spare until Arvid's arrival, he recaps the recent series of events that have put Arvid in a delicate situation—a man who up until 12 days prior Richard had never heard of.
The rest of the film is a series of flashbacks leading up to Arvid's meeting with Richard. Following his argument with Hanne, Arvid went to work and encountered a disgruntled customer who decided to help himself to a “loan” with a shotgun. Tired of standing on the sidelines, Arvid strikes the man with a racket and puts an end to the sloppy robbery. His employers decide to reward him for his heroic efforts and send him home early with a paid vacation. When he gets to his apartment he discovers that his girlfriend has left him and taken all of their furniture. A woman comes to his door and starts to attack him, claiming that she's the girlfriend of the man he interfered with at the bank and that they needed the money to try and get in vitro fertilization. Out on the street, a crummy rock band attacks him on the grounds of being a hero.
The onslaught of abuse and the guilt of coming between a couple's happiness becomes too much to bear. He reaches out to his estranged brother Harald (Kim Bodina). Harald is an ex-con who runs a restaurant and has a few screws loose. He asks for his help in robbing an armored truck with the intention of giving the money to the robber and his girlfriend. Using two of Harald's cooks (Nikolaj Lie Kaas & Tomas Villum Jensen) and his dishwasher Vuk (Brian Patterson), an illegal immigrant with family ties to a mob, they come up with a ludicrous plan of action. The heist leaves two people dead and Vuk injured. Despite the mess they've made, Arvid moves on and plans to break the bank robber out of jail, but first they have to answer to Vuk's relatives who are upset about his new injuries. Somewhere along his psychotic journey to set things right everything goes wrong. With their many complications and interference from others, the body count rises. But once Arvid realizes that he's just as crazy as, if not more than, his brother, he starts to use his new resources to get back at those who mistreated him.
I was half expecting this to be a revenge/heist movie with lots of violence and nerve-wracking excitement. Since it's from Denmark, I was automatically prepared to see a movie like Pusher, which also stars Kim Bodina and was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising). It is a movie about several heists and a mousy man's revenge, but done in the way of Pulp Fiction and other dark action comedies. The foolish mistakes they make and the effortlessness of their destruction is what made the movie so funny. There were times when it plays like a group of teenagers who get their hands on guns and try to achieve something ballsy. Some of it even reminds me of slapstick. There's a scene where Harald is trying to get Arvid to stand up for himself and teach one of his attackers a lesson. He gives him an automatic handgun with the intention of letting him injure one of the men at close range. But, since Arvid has never handled an automatic weapon before, he accidentally riddles an entire room full of people with bullets. The whole movie has this kind of satire where outrageous crimes are intensified by dopey mistakes. And like a good Tarantino flick, it's one of those movies that has a lot of offensive humor. Where Straw Dogs sort of rewards its protagonist by giving him gusto and respectability, this movie turns a chump into a trigger-happy buffoon. The ending is hands down one of the most unsuspecting, funniest and offensive endings to an action movie, period. This film is recommended to those who like action, dark comedy, and heists that go terribly wrong.
Posted by:
Edythe Smith
Jul 14, 2011 11:48am
