When I attended a screening of EM/HtK, it was poorly attended. That may because of the blizzard that night, or it may have been because a popular on-line site of movie reviews gave it a mere 53% on their Lettuce meter. At the time, their highest rated film was The LEGO Movie, and that, I think, explains this movie's poor reception in the US.
It's a famous truism among Hollywood producers that "People don't go to the movies to get depressed," and Americans might've liked this movie more if, after all the mayhem, the female lead and the young desperado had ridden off into the sunset and were last seen walking down a beach at sunset and holding hands.
But for those of us who admire realism, not cartoon fantasy, this is an extraordinarily gripping movie. As Europe suffers through the effects of the IMF's austerity penance, unemployment among young people in some nations approaches 50%, and in such circumstances they turn to crime. This is the case not only in Madrid and Athens (and Detroit), but as people migrate north, everywhere, including Stockholm, where this movie is set.
Actor Joel Kinnaman's role is diminished from the first movie in the series, and it's also less interesting, but the rest of the cast more than makes up for this.
¡ ≥ SPOILER ALERT ≤ ≥ SPOILER ALERT ≤ !
If you have not yet seen EM/HtK, please read no further.
The only false note in this grim movie is near the end, where the two sympathetic characters, Nadja, the young woman who has been forced into prostitution, and Jorge, the guy who begs his dead mother for forgiveness for all his misdeeds, fall in love but are tragically gunned down by a shotgun-wielding assassin from the mob. Getting blasted by a 12-gauge at point-blank range would, in reality, have left her viscera splattered across the room, and when the guy takes a load of buckshot in the upper back, he miraculously does not go into shock or even cough blood. Instead, as they are wheeled into the ambulance, they smile and make dewy eyes at each other.
It's a mawkishly sentimental scene in an otherwise uncompromising movie.
It's a famous truism among Hollywood producers that "People don't go to the movies to get depressed," and Americans might've liked this movie more if, after all the mayhem, the female lead and the young desperado had ridden off into the sunset and were last seen walking down a beach at sunset and holding hands.
But for those of us who admire realism, not cartoon fantasy, this is an extraordinarily gripping movie. As Europe suffers through the effects of the IMF's austerity penance, unemployment among young people in some nations approaches 50%, and in such circumstances they turn to crime. This is the case not only in Madrid and Athens (and Detroit), but as people migrate north, everywhere, including Stockholm, where this movie is set.
Actor Joel Kinnaman's role is diminished from the first movie in the series, and it's also less interesting, but the rest of the cast more than makes up for this.
¡ ≥ SPOILER ALERT ≤ ≥ SPOILER ALERT ≤ !
If you have not yet seen EM/HtK, please read no further.
The only false note in this grim movie is near the end, where the two sympathetic characters, Nadja, the young woman who has been forced into prostitution, and Jorge, the guy who begs his dead mother for forgiveness for all his misdeeds, fall in love but are tragically gunned down by a shotgun-wielding assassin from the mob. Getting blasted by a 12-gauge at point-blank range would, in reality, have left her viscera splattered across the room, and when the guy takes a load of buckshot in the upper back, he miraculously does not go into shock or even cough blood. Instead, as they are wheeled into the ambulance, they smile and make dewy eyes at each other.
It's a mawkishly sentimental scene in an otherwise uncompromising movie.