The Guild

Good acting, good story, but poor in a historical perspective. The movie set in the time period of Scanian war between Swedes and Danes tells the story of a man who's family is murdered by the Swedes. The main character joins a band of Scanian freedom fighters to seek revenge on the people murdering his family. Places and events are totally fictional which made me a bit disappointed. Maybe I was hoping for a Scanian version of Braveheart/The patriot etc. The name Snapphane, which was used as a pejorative term by the Swedes to describe the pro-Danish rebels,is used by everyone in the movie. Had the people behind the mini series done a better research to make it historical correct I would have giving it a higher vote. Acting and parts of the story is worth 7/10 votes, historically 1/10 so my final vote will be a 4 out of 10. I hope the mini series become an inspiration for others to make more movies in the same genre.

This movie has such a large and ambitious goal so it's no wonder it misses the mark here and there. To tell a complicated and grand-scale story with a classic set of characters and a real bad guy(who even get's a fancy bad guy's mask), with historical issues to recognize, and deal with a lot of other issues that arise in this sort of movie, is hard and it's really nothing for two guys who seem to be in it for the fun of it.

Still, you can feel Stein and Mårlind have done a real effort. There is fancy camera-work and a fancy score, there is a script with some twists and turns, there are scenes with a lot of extras and gunfights, and some pretty grave liberties taken with Swedish history(which is good in these movies).

One of the biggest problems is pacing. There's no good flow, and I think pacing is one of the largest problems for inexperienced filmmakers.

Acting is very varied. Kim Bodnia is of course the experience pool of this project, and he's good as usual, with his cool Danish uniform and un-characteristically tidy facial appearance. On second place I put Harald Leander(he played Nils's father), since I actually know the guy a bit, so I knew he was actually acting and not being himself. His performance was good, and definitely the best of the Swedish ones. The lead man is OK, nothing memorable. The bad guy (Anders Ekborg) was pretty good, and has one of the funniest parts to play.

Gustaf Skarsgård and Malin Morgan are also somewhat memorable(even though I got serious Ondskan-vibbar).

Music is good the first 3/4s of the movie but at the end it's just a monotone ticking "hurry-up" melody which really got annoying.

It was good for what it was; a Scanian semi-epic, meant for one viewing over the course of three days. I would never watch this all at once and I regret I could not see it on a large screen.

5.5/10 for the movie, 8/10 for Skåne!

This is a poor series when it comes to the script. The filming is OK, but the dialogue is really just a waste of time. The characters are just repeating themselves and talking about what to do instead of actually doing it (but perhaps that's pretty accurate when it comes to portraying swedes?).

I can't see why there should be a problem to create a great story on the subject, with all the necessary ingredients. It seems no time at all was spent on doing research. I do NOT want Sweden to go down the road of "nevermind historical correctness, just give the audience a story" when it comes to movies based on actual historic events or periods of time.

The potential was there, but this production blew it.

Why? Well, where do we start? - The people known as "snapphanar" called themselves "Friskyttar", meaning Free Shooters - snapphane was the degrading expression used by The Swedish.

• The Costune designer should be put in jail, or at least in historical style education, for using typical 18th century clothing, which is a mistake often seen by role playing amateurs with no money and little knowledge of history, but this was supposed to be SVT's huge expensive great big mega Xmas project...? Hello??!

• The script is a disaster, the plot is ridiculously easily foreseen and the dialog is embarrassingly bad.

• There are so many historical errors and anachronisms that lining them all up here would probably crash the IMDb's disc space. artistically I 'm OK with anachronism, but the production team should always be aware of what they do and why. Seems like Snapphanar was made by a bunch of teenagers whose sole historical knowledge comes from many a late night playing dungeons and dragons... which is a wonderful way of starting an interest in history but it just won't do as full education.

• Dramatically there are also a lot of errors in continuity as well as in credibility. Example: The soldiers guarding the coach with the royal treasure chest seem to be totally unaware of the noise and flickering fire lights coming from the village where the rebels have started a riot.

• And Svart-Stina, what can you say...? Her outfit on the royal ball is not exactly what one would call discreet. *sigh*

• Snapphanar is of course to be regarded as a fantasy, a fictitious tale woven and embroidered upon the cloth of authentic history. But it has been done by people lacking too much knowledge.

• A non-Swede would probably not notice, but the use of Scanian accent in this project is unfortunately, and as many times before, a total disgrace to its audiences. The only actors who actually knows how to speak Scanian - Harald Leander, Per Lasson, to mention some - use accents from a totally different area, but at least they know how to speak it and unlike Jörgen Persson they also know acting. The leading actors, however, André Sjöberg and Malin Morgan (former Larsson), well educated and all, doesn't seem to have had very much time to learn their character's way of talking, there are loads of mal-functious pronunciations that really hurt the ear and is very hard to understand also for a Scanian. Those Scanians living in the Göinge area must feel totally lost and quite embarrassed - I don't think they recognize much. For once it's easy to understand those otherwise pompous Stockholmers who claim that they possibly just cannot understand Scanian Sw3edish. I think not even Scanians understand the gibberish urging from the mouths of Svart-Stina and Nils Getting. Sad.

• According to SVT ( Swedish Television)'s homepage the shooting of the entire miniseries took 47 days. That's quite fast for such a prestigious project. Especially considering the fact that the directors have worked 2 and a half years on creating the series. Seems like 90% of the time and financial resources have been spent on special effects. They're quite nice. But nothing that we haven't already seen in films like LOTR, Gladiator, Braveheart a.s.o.

• The same thing could be said about the music that, stuffed like a plum pudding with movie score clichés and with some small exceptions sounds like a total ripoff from anything produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Very Where Eagles Dare, very U.S. Marine Corps, very Hollywood, very full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Pity.

"Bergman is dead, long live the movies!" is the best way I can describe this mini seen at the special premiere opening.

Finally Swedish movie makers dare to mix a historic event with fiction and make something more fun, beautiful and exciting than just a Bergman drama or a reality show. But of course, when Måns and Björn do something it's done for the public and not just the critics.

What really strikes me is the characters, they are so vivid! Excellent acting makes the story feel true. They seem to be living at that time and place and really bring you in to their world. I can't think of one single actor that could be replaced, they all do it so well.

A special note on the music (no pun intended), it's by far the best score in a Swedish movie yet. Buy the DVD if you have surround sound in your home, it will be worth it.

I think this mini set a new standard for film making in Sweden, showing that it is possible to make beautiful movies in Europe. And we want more.