Four friends, nicknamed "The Iron Gang", make a canoeing trip to a rapid river. There they meet two sisters named Marie and Susanne (Yaba Holst and Josephine Bornebusch), set up their camp with the girls and spend the night partying wildly. Next morning Susanne is nowhere to be found but the guys claim to not remember anything from the previous night as they were all heavily drunk. Marie reports her missing, and in the following police investigation the gang has to put their friendship to test. What really happened? Are some of the guys hiding something or are they innocent after all?
Of the four friends the most attention is given to Lukas and Simon (Emil Forselius and Rafael Edholm), two brothers with a strict and demanding father, while the other two guys of the gang, Anders and John (Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Lorentzon), are left more in the background. The movie is more of a character study than a crime thriller; one of the main points is to examine Lukas and Simon's brotherly relationship while tensions are rising. The brooding and slightly menacing Simon is the most interesting one of the characters, but Lukas has his own secrets too. I think Rafael Edholm's performance as Simon captures his character's nature well, but the pretty-faced Emil Forselius cannot quite deliver the emotions necessary to make the sensitive Lukas a fascinating person. Actually, the focus is on the brothers so much that I'm not sure if the quiet John character was needed at all for the plot.
At the end of the day, Järngänget is a watchable movie with some beautiful scenery and strongly coloured cinematography. The crime investigation plot is not really highly suspenseful or well developed, but I think the film is better seen as a drama story anyway. It may not be the most profound of character studies, but I don't find it as obnoxiously bad as some reviews seem to indicate.
