nzxt

Well, I needed to post a comment about this one simply because I was born in the year for release, 1973. I have studied film theory and mass media and found this film to provide interesting perspectives along obscenity. The main message here, is a critique against the commercialism of commodities in every land and society. Every commodity is possible to make profit from; sex, drugs, lifestyle, economics to warfare including religious artefact's. Somehow it gives you some sort of better insight upon complex matters that are as suitable to our modern world. It's a crazy, drugged-up ride with genuine characters nicely played by to me unknown actors. A real pity that the film starts to drag by the end, to much zen-Buddhism to new age-mysticism to keep me astounded...

Swedish films usually are known to play it safe with the storyline, often mixing drama with psychology. This attempt on a thriller/drama,tries to examine the moral compass inside the protagonists. We learn about makes up the driving force leading up to a personal vendetta,including the clichéd stereotypical. There's the Yugoslavian gangsters with bad mouth, a psychologist asking dumb questions and the pizza-owner who has no influence over his son's actions. The violent anticlimax of "Leo" makes you wonder where all the creativity of the scriptwriting went. How this for a plot; Josef Fares would have played Leo and had to battle not just the loss of his girlfriend. Also there would be some racism of the Swedish gangsters, and at the same time be helped by his friends to understand morality and ethics. It could actually have been some trilling tension, when Leo with friends finally meet up with the antagonists in court...