Lek

I'm not a fan of Dutch movies. This one is different. The actors actually act well and I wasn't bored one single minute. Finally not a dumb or "empty" (no good story line whatsoever) film. Bravo!

The film is based on a book about corruption in the Amsterdam police department by an ex-detective. Thus showing that reality is often more crazy than what we imagine.

It all starts innocently enough when police officer Eddy is asked to get in touch with his childhood friend Jack, who is now on the other side of the law. But everything soon spins out of control.

Director Jean van de Velde has a tight grip on the story. He is helped by a good script that manages to bring a few nice twists to a well-known formula. He also has a good cast. Especially Ton Kas as sinister gangster boss and Victor Löw as gangster with strong paternal feelings.

This is a good movie. The built-up tension is very exciting. The acting is good, especially by Victor Low. But as a Dutch person, it's also more exciting because you can really recognize the way people behave and the situations that arise. Because it all looks and sounds so familiar, you just identify with it more. It's strange because you see so many of these dangerous and scary situations being performed in English but not in Dutch. So when you see it in a familiar environment and in Dutch, it's just more creepy. But also a good movie in itself.

I live in Amsterdam, and it's interesting to read all the critical Dutch comments on this film and on Dutch Film in general. The camera-work, as usual, was OK here, but I couldn't get involved in the plot, if that's the right word for the sequence of scenes. I felt as though I was standing outside and watching the film go by. Not even the loud music and some fast editing could draw me in. Why?

I have a theory. Holland is 2-dimensional. Flat. Images anywhere are flat, as Mondriaan reminded us, but people who live in 3 dimensions build narratives, with flat images, in a 3-dimensional space or rather, in a 4-dimensional spacetime. They see images in a sort of deeper landscape, with a sense, an idea, of other things in the foreground and background – the images have depth, 'meaning', which can be organized in a complicated pattern and dynamic, a plot. The Dutch simply can't do this, and their attempts to construct stories in 3 dimensions always seem amateurish, childish. They can't build a story into which you can enter. Some people - even some Dutch people - say: 'they have no imagination'.

They make some great documentaries, and they have some good cameramen and women. But they can't do fiction, which articulates images in the play of imagination. Documentary makers, even some wayward filmmakers like Paul Verhoeven, can turn this around and make a virtue of the problem. They can build a collage of images into something like a question, or an ironical game, leaving the third dimension, the meaning or depth, radically open in ways that people living in 3 dimensions find very difficult to do, because 'normal' people are always themselves caught up in the play of meaning from the outset, unable to stand radically outside it.

I guess the best thing would be for the Flatlanders to recognize their strengths and their limitations, and stop trying to make 'normal' films like this one. But to do this would require a lot of imagination….

I must say I quite enjoyed this film from Jean van de Velde. His script is far from original, to be sure, but it has a lot going for it. Victor Löw is entertaining as the driven friend from hell whose reappearance in a young policeman's life changes the destination of all concerned. Cas Jansen has the innocent looks his character requires and, although a bit tame in the beginning, he gets better as the film progresses to its inevitable violent conclusion. There are several more than adequate action scenes for the fans to enjoy: my favourite is the one where two hitmen chase the young cop through an animal sanctuary where he is forced to use the cover of some horses to get away clean. Production values are above standard although you better don't hold your breath if you want to wait for some original camerawork. The attraction of Lek, I believe, lies in the director's willingness to give the audience what it wants. There are some nasty, violent set pieces that will delight the hard core cop thriller freaks. As far as brainless entertainment goes, this is as good as anything made in Hong Kong these days.