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.
