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De utvalda (2020)
3/10
Nice setting, horrible execution
28 May 2020
Warning: Spoilers
12 girls, all unknown to each other, wake up in stately manor. Doors are bolted, windows bullet-proof, a small back garden is open, but walled in by an electrical fence. Soon they are informed through a TV set that they are there to help create a vaccine for the terrible, deadly flu that is killing off the world. Because of their DNA being unique. Not very likely. Not very creative. But a nice enough setting for short TV series. Lost meets Lord of the flies meets Swedish bikini team.

The good stuff: These are 15-minutes episodes. You can watch the whole series in one evening. And one of the girl exhibits some very creepy psychopatic traits.

The bad stuff: The story is just horribly rushed together. No sense of time. Has it been two hours? Seven days? Several months? No way to tell. The first three episodes most of them use the same clothes (fresh supplies are provided), yet they have already started a cargo cult religion, made weapons to kill each others and hacked into the surveillance system with an X-box. After all 6 episodes you have gotten to know know about half the girls. Two of them have something close to a personality. The rest are cardboard figures. There is no continuity between the scenes. One scene can end in a girl getting beaten and hauled away, the next she comes hand in hand with her attacker. Key figure Rita knows more than the others and has been given great trust by their detainers. They all know that. But they never ask her about the truth. And she shreds her loyalty to the detainers at the first suggestion she should do so. And of course, we have some very very stilted lines delivered by some very very unexperienced actors. The dialogue really hurts badly sometimes. And the revelation of The Truth? Please. I have no words.

A weak 3 from me. (I know I might not be in the key target group for this, being a 50+ years old man. But I know quality when I see it. Here there was nothing to see.)
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Tyven, tyven (2002)
8/10
Straight through my heart
3 October 2012
Wow.

This should be mandatory watching for every person involved in child custody cases. Things aren't necessarily what they appear to be. Langhelle tour-de-force, his best performance ever, and a script to match it.

Wow.

I have a personal tale to tell. I started to watch this alone at night. I started to cry. Half-way through my daughter (about 13 at the time) woke up and came down. She remembered and understood. This was her story. Our story. Politikally unkorrect, but still true. Of course it doesn't fit the big screen. It's a low-keyed script. Low budget, mind-blowingly huge story. Recommended for all parents, especially mothers.
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3/10
Nah. Don't bother. Watch the play instead.
3 October 2012
A great original play. Transformed into boring TV movie format. Ibsen's condensed script just won't translate into 90 minutes of silver screen (or more likely, your TV). Best actors available, fabulous scenery, one of Norway's best of new-breed directors can't rescue an awful idea: converting 1900-style theater into same-length feature film. A movie version of the stage play would have been better. This adaption just doesn't cut it. Main character's madness, the treason of the intellectuals, the resounding ambivalence of last paragraph - nothing is retained. What remains is a boring environmental issue story.

Kudos for trying to update the story, but really: does it have to be updated?

Forgettable. Too bad, since the play is one of the most painful and exciting stories ever to have been created.
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