Nordvest

I saw this at Pifan 2013 in Bucheon, South Korea, and while I've seen several Danish movies that were so-so to lackluster, this one was entertaining.

Caspar is a young man who has a single mother and two siblings in Copenhagen. He burglarizes homes and sells the stuff he steals to an Arab thug, Jamal, who cheats him all the time. Caspar is later offered a job with a pimp named Bjorn and starts to earn good money. But Jamal is angry that Caspar is working for someone else and seeks revenge.

The movie was interesting and the characters seemed real, though I don't know much about Denmark. I'd say this was worth a watch, though the ending seemed a bit flat.

This movie relates the story of a young man living in a modest suburb in Denmark. Skilled burglar, he will try to rise the grade of the criminal underworld, underestimating the dangerousness of the consequences of his acts. Far from Hollywood gangster movies, the way this movie was recorded, the scenery as well as the actor's performances plunge the viewer into a deeply realistic violence. Interestingly, the film maker (Michael Noer) succeeded in showing a violence that will knot your stomach without being gore at all which is very rare nowadays. An excellent movie, in the direct line of Gomorra (Matteo Garrone), in a radically different geographical situation.

A nice story of small gangsters trying to stay above water. The relationships in this and the characters are well drawn and avoid getting into too many cliché traps. The movie/script is well written too of course, but it is the actors who carry the weight. It's tough playing off each other and making the audience buy that.

I doubt this will be your first venture into crime story foray, but if you have a knack for European style of showing things (read: not as fancy as a Hollywood Blockbuster would show them), you will really relish watching this. There is violence and there is many adult situations happening, so you should be fine with watching that. If that is the case, there is a more than decent movie to enjoy here

'Nordvest' is a Danish film about a young criminal. Casper is a house burglar who sells what he steals to an Arab gang. But when one of the Arabs steals Casper's watch, Casper - completely missing the irony that he himself had stolen the watch in the first place - starts working for a rival gang, eventually getting his younger (and dimmer) brother involved also.

So far, so predictable - and the film largely is, even down to Casper's tender relationship with his toddler sister - hey, he's a thug with a heart! But a thug is still a thug and so it is difficult to feel any sympathy for him as events spiral beyond his control. In the lead role, Gustav Dyekjær Giese does a nice line in cool, and the film is definitely worth watching once - but only once.

I love realistic drama, and the creators of this film maintained the illusion of watching a good documentary, without commentary, but delivering slamming meaning, and meanings, just the same. The proliferation of single mothers raising a family is a bane to society, and young men growing up to think being silent and emotionless is the means to self actualization leads toward the fall.

I could identify with Casper immediately, even being female, and not a burglar. I did not see him as a criminal but one who is flailing in existential angst with no hope of a future to get ahead.

If he had had a Tiger mom, and along with all the other siblings had been made to study, instead of playing video games, and play hooky from school with impunity, there would not have been a movie. The mother is depicted as gentle, not crass, loving, but not having the means to discipline her brew.

Casper's downfall is his ultimate sense of decency his younger brother does not have, and him I see as a criminal mind, a psychopathic personality who can't keep from bragging, and betrays his brother who made the mistake of coming back to help him.

I really felt badly for the gals who were treated as chattel sex toys. Though I have never been in their position either, my heart cries out to all women who end up in such desperate, and deplorable conditions which only result in ultimate abandonment and downfall,symbolized by the hapless gal who gets shot and is immediately just shuffled off, and we are pretty sure it is not to a hospital.

The frightening rise of kids being conceived out of wedlock and raised by single mothers or because of divorce, is not a good sign for the continued polarization of our society between the haves and the have-nots. We not only need more tiger moms, but tiger dads.