Michael Kohlhaas

French films dealing with medieval events tend to be romantic, adventurous and beautiful, with colourful costumes, picturesque landscapes and magnificent dwellings. The story around Michael Kohlhaas is originally German, so is the book, that is why it is difficult to comprehend why the French became interested in this. The result is a joint French-German drama (well, I even recognised some German actors in small roles) where the French language is aggravating rather than supplementing - at least for me. The run is slow, the environment is ugly, there are a few twists, thus I started to focus on acting very soon. Of course, Mads Mikkelsen (a Dane!) is great as usual, and as far I understood, his French was very good (true, he is often employed in foreign films, I have seen him speaking Swedish, English, German as well throughout the film). Other performances seemed a bit arid to me - apparently due to the characters - and, all in all, the film in question caused ambivalent feelings; there was a lot of inner profundity, but the course of events seemed perfunctory. But fans of Mikkelsen will not be disappointed as there are a few scenes without his presence only.