mickekarlsson1974

Most Swedes are probably aware that the entire city of Kiruna in northern Sweden town has been been moved (and is still in the process of being moved) due to the LKAB mine expanding and the risk of cave ins are therefore substantial.

...or something along those lines.

This well-made and fantastically exciting Swedish disaster movie paints a scenario in which the impending collapse becomes fact.

Frigga (Tuva Novotny) is in charge of safety in the mine, and she tries to balance the relationship she has with her demanding job with the relationship she has with her two children and her ex-husband (David Franzén), and now also her new boyfriend (Kardo Razzazi) - who have just come up from Uppsala to surprise her in Kiruna, right on time for when everything starts going to hell.

Avgrunden certainly lives up to all the usual disaster movie standards: From a slow build of tension, to the total disaster - and everything in between.

It has characters with history, and whose personal lives you actually invest in - and to keep the tension high, the movie doesn't shy away from sacrificing a few of them.

But even if it is "standard", it is GOOD standard!

The scenes in the mine are claustrophobic on an unexpectedly high level, and the "crawling through the narrow passage" sequence in particular left me short of breath!

The chaos out on the street lacks those real mammoth proportions, but for a Swedish movie it was still impressive!

The last bit felt a little drawn out, and I would have preferred to instead see it woven into a longer disaster sequence, with the big collapse as the climax.

Richard Holm directs, and he has also written the screenplay together with his son Robin Holm aswell as Nicola Sinclair.

I have a difficult relationship with Swedish cinema, so I always get extra happy when a movie made in my home country surprises me, and this was 105 unexpectedly thrilling minutes in the movie theater!

Both 'Paddington' (2014) and this one are directed by Paul King, but somewhere in the middle - the first time I watched this sequel - I had to stop and check if it wasn't in fact directed by Wes Anderson... The aesthetic is 100% Anderson, and the tone of the story (the strange sense of a "heightened reality" fairy tale) is also something Anderson is an expert at.

But no, no matter how you twist and turn it, it's not a complex and aesthetically perfected arthouse film aimed at an adult cineaste audience, but rather a cozy and very funny family movie about a Peruvian bear who is wrongly convicted of theft and winds up in prison - where he accidentally dyes all the prisoners' clothes pink, and now works as a marmalade cook in the prison kitchen.

-BUT... somehow it STILL manages to also be a complex and aesthetically perfected arthouse film!

The entire Brown family reprises their roles, with new additions in the form of Brendan Gleeson and Hugh Grant - both giving great performances! Grant in particular is insanely entertaining here!

'Paddington 2' has nods to so many other famous films, characters and actors that many of them woosh by unnoticed the first time around.

The details are all the way down to micro level, and 'Paddington 2' has a sky-high replay value (I think I've seen it at least five times in less than two years).

I don't know if this is a children's movie in an adult costume, or an adult movie in children's clothes... But I do know that this one, for me, is one of the best sequels ever made, and as a movie it is absolute perfection!