Manslaughter

A teacher's activist mistress runs over and kills a police officer. The teacher leaves his wife to stand by his girlfriend. The focus in this one seemed off to me. The atmosphere is of a thriller or a noir, when instead the issues would have been brought out better without these elements (e.g., the lighting and the musical score). I also felt the plot was poorly developed. The girlfriend and the two men who were with her during the fateful night get off nearly scot-free because none of them confesses – and therefore they can't prove which one of them was the driver. Either the Danish legal system is the worst in the world or their detectives really suck, or, probably the true option, the screenwriters don't have a clue how these things actually work. (n.b. – according to one IMDb reviewer, the first option is the correct one!).

For the last film in his trilogy Per Fly has made a very good film about the Danish middle class. For me the problem is that the two first films in his trilogy about the three Danish classes, Bænken (The Bench) and Arven (The Inheritance) were excellent, while this is just very good. For those not in the know about of Danish society, the Danish middle class is by far the largest class in Denmark and maybe the most boring -at least it seems that way in Per Fly's film. He may have a point but he certainly hammers it home with a lot of looooong, slow scenes. It works, as some of the scenes conveys very embarrassing moments for the characters and in the process makes you, the viewer, embarrassed as well. Still, that concept was better realised in Thomas Winterberg's "Festen (The Party)". The story in Drabet is based on a real life incident: In the 80's a group of seven well-educated middle class men with leftish leanings committed a series of robberies against banks and post offices all over Denmark and Sweden with the aim to acquire money and weapons for PFLP (the Palestinan Liberation Front, or maybe their mortal enemies The Liberation Front of Palestine - sorry, Monty Python reference there). At a robbery against a post office in central Copenhagen in 1988 they shot and killed a young policeman. The group was eventually caught and tried but since it couldn't be established who had fired the mortal shot, no one was sentenced for the murder. The whole group did serve jail time for the robberies but have been free since 1995 - not exactly a hard sentence for the person who pulled the trigger. It is certainly an interesting dilemma how you deal with killing someone - even if it's for a cause you think is just. As usual, the best Danish actor, Jesper Christensen, is doing a delightful job in the lead role, but I still feel the slow pace - even if it's artistically justified - drags a good film from excellent to very good. Still, I'm sure Per Fly's trilogy will stand as a beacon for Danish film-making for many years to come.

The story centers on a social studies high school teacher. Hes married and has been having an affair with a former student. Hes an old communist and the student is a radical, inclined towards hard-line activism. We might perceive him as her ideological father.

We learn already in the beginning of the film that the student has taken part in an action against a weapons manufacturer, where a policeman ended up dead somehow. The question is how and why, how to deal with it and what the consequences will be? We follow the teacher as he tries to come to grasp with what has happened. He is dissatisfied with his marriage and finds his safe middle class existence lacking. So he latches on to the wings of his love for the young student, and her convictions, and takes off, on an Icarus ride towards societies boundaries.

Its the old 'Crime and Punishment' theme again, set to a Danish middle class and political background. It deals with questions of guilt, romantic love and the meaning of politics. If bombs are killing thousands in Iraq, is it so odd when someone dies in Denmark? Is the main character a thrill seeker, out for the rush of a young woman's love and fiery convictions? Is there any meaning in punishment? How much guilt should one be feeling?

The film weeds a tangled web of morality, desires and politics. However, it is not as tangled, or perhaps not as well untangled, as it could have been. The motives for the different actions undertaken are never really elaborated on. Rather the film is often quiet. Perhaps that is part of the point, a low bass-like sound is humming all through the movie, like a constant, gnarling feeling of guilt. But it still feels like something is missing in the character description. We also understand quite soon what direction the plot is taking, the contours are a bit obvious. It is not hard to predict the moral of the story, or the fate of the school teacher, far ahead of time. Still, it is a compelling and thought-provoking film in many ways. The acting is highly believable and we understand the main characters aggression against petite bourgeois existence as well as his loneliness and sadness over losing it.

Also Id like to give props to the most explicit hand gliding-Icarus analogy since '24 Hour Party People'. Real good stuff. That should be used in even more films, I think!

Cinematically, Per Fly's film contains all the elements of excellence accompanied by good performances rendered by the cast. Opening sequences signaled that the audience was on board for a good ride, unfortunately the ride ended all too soon. If this was not part of a trilogy I would have walked out after 30 minutes.

Scandinavian films are known for quiet story telling which I usually appreciate, but this is just badly paced. That low hum within the soundtrack must have been the sound of paint drying on what could have been a good picture. One would think that four screenwriters could deliver a compelling story-line, maybe therein lies a problem.

Considering the high quality of Fly's previous entries in the trilogy ("Bænken" & "Arven") he should have stopped at a duo or hired a objective Editor. Twenty minutes less running time may have provided a tightening and focus necessary to hold our attention. At least it would have made for a better paced film which may have found an international audience. Sadly, Drabet misses the mark of excellence by approximately half a kilometer of footage.

YAWN YAWN YAWN! Ask any so called intellectual movie-critic, and he or she will say that this movie is oh so great. They will say that this movie deals with the dark side of man, with moral dilemmas! That might be true, but at the same time this movie has been seen many times before in Danish movies. Make up something new! Per Fly has been said to be a genius. Yeah well, if a genius is a person who can copy, then he is. The existential themes of this movie is not something new, Kierkegaard and the Sartre (just to mention a few) have written about this a long time ago. And what is up with Charlotte Fich! She is a Drama Queen in this movie. I understand the role she plays, I just don't believe in it. She overdoes it!