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Reviews
Harry & Sonja (1996)
Offbeat and Quirky and all those other art-house adjectives
I watch a lot of Scandinavian flicks and TV shows. Most are really decent. Some are outstanding. This one just laid there for me. Look, I'm American and somewhat well read (an oxymoron, I know), but the themes that were being put across in this tale of two disconnected married people were somewhat beyond my grasp. Maybe it was very localized, what with all the social welfare state allusions to Harry's wife housing all the mixed-bag of refugees from the street. Maybe it pointed towards Sweden's altruistic nature of her yearning to move to Africa. I have no idea what Sonja's deal was. Her husband is a wacky, with a capital "W," mercenary, shooting red paintball bullets at passersby and commiserating with a sad-sap Harry, but he, along with everyone else here, is nothing but a cardboard "representative" of something. There's no real, 3-dimensional human beings in this film. So, if you're not up on Swedish life or are not quite in tune with their brand of social satire, this may baffle you too. Pop singer Regina Lund makes a brief appearance as Harry's unfixed focus of a mistress, and vet Per Oscarsson practically jumps off the screen with a giddy pulse as Harry's bon vivant dad, but even they can't raise the bulk of this stale 90 minute Odd-yssey out of its screwball tiresome morass.
Rejseholdet (2000)
Excellent series - much better quality than our U.S. crap
First off, I'm an American -- I haven't seen any comments on IMDb about this series yet from a U.S. viewer. Secondly, I work in the television business in development. So I wallow in much of the sludge that comes out of American broadcast programming. "Unit One" is an example of television that's a throwback to what I would attribute as '70s-style scripting, feature-wise. Namely, those films made by young autueurs who had free rein to make the dramas feel more realistic and to allow for organic character development. It tacks more along the lines of stellar British dramas like "Cracker" and "Prime Suspect" as well as Australia's brilliant "Underbelly." "Unit One" features stand-alone cases that are committed, then solved, each week. The mysteries aren't extraordinary or particularly byzantine. They usually center around one single twist, clocking in generally at the 40 minute mark, and resolution is neatly wrapped up in the 15 minutes thereafter. What makes this series a breath of fresh air is that it features main characters that you are hooked on and find relatable by episode 2. These are real, breathing, alive characters that have personal baggage, yet it's not a talky, batty type of baggage that American flotsam such as "Grey's Anatomy" or "Desperate Housewives" spoons out. These are realistic individuals whose backstories unfold leisurely over the course of the series, as if you work with them on a daily basis. After the mindless decade of "CSI's," "NCIS's," and "Criminal Minds," along with their subsequent spawns, it's refreshing to actually sit down to watch friends you want to spend time with, as is the case with "Unit One." The quippy banter, the unemotional wooden dialogue, and the over-the-top jeopardy that those American series I mentioned bludgeon us with each week are absurd compared to the nuance and the quiet resonance you get with this remarkable Danish series. I'm on episode 7 of the first season, but I've already bought all four seasons and am in for the long haul. If you need explosions and farcically-hopped up testosterone, along with music by The Who and fast-cutting, neon-lit, jittery palsy-cam action with cipher-like main characters as your main diet of television drama viewing, I suggest you stay away from this series. If you are an adult with a hunger for subtle, poignant, thoughtful and, yes, sometimes straight-forward procedural crime dramas, I urge you to check this show out.
My Old Man's Place (1971)
One of the first anti-Vietnam War flicks
Before Rolling Thunder, Coming Home, Deer Hunter and a little flick by the name of Apocalypse Now, this film popped up in a few select theatres as a harbinger of post-traumatic things to come. Since it was released in 1972, and probably shot in '71, one can assume the filmmakers and the novel upon which it was based, might've been influenced by the accounts told by John Kerry and other anti-war vets during the Winter Soldier testimonies.
What we get here is a small indie film that's not very polished, but has some honest moments that don't try to gloss over the oft-told story of a vet's return home with a lot of intellectual dissection. Michael Moriarty, in his introductory role, is Trubie, a reluctant armed services lad who seems to have fought the Viet Cong while fighting against his dad's starch-filled authoritarianism in his psyche. He returns home to the Bay Area of Northern California with his dim-witted soldier pal, William Devane.
Now, this is not exactly Bill Devane's shining moment on-screen, but he does irritatingly capture the obnoxiousness and immaturity many barely-grown soldiers possessed when they were called up to kill people. He laughs heartily at Road Runner cartoons and always lets his mouth overrule whatever common sense his brain might be trying to telegraph to others. Needless to say, he gets the crap beaten out of him several times in the picture.
And those beatings are served up by spring-taut Mitchell Ryan, a no-nonsense rapist and gung-ho sergeant, eager to see the weak-minded and the meek crushed under his indomitable will. Presumably, the War amplified these tendencies, and when he hooks up with Moriarty and Devane to go to Moriarty's Old Man's Place (the old man being Arthur Kennedy), well, he certainly brings the gunpowder to the flame.
The atrocities of the Vietnam War are conveyed through Moriarty's scarred character, when he relates how he viciously gunned down a Vietnamese woman and proceeded to fill her body with an entire magazine of ammo. Mind you, this is several years before this stuff was routinely discussed on screen.
"My Old Man's Place" is a comfortable character piece, most of it taking place at the dad's ramshackle farm in vineyard country. Since it's a '70s movie, don't expect sunshine and bunnies hopping in a field by the last reel. Overall, a noteworthy and extremely overlooked actors' ensemble gem from the best decade of films.