Plan C

Ronald Plasmeyer, a totally irrelevant Amsterdam police detective, is the saddest sod of the department, and probably of the entire recent Dutch cinema at that.

This intriguing loser frantically tries to keep his life together, trying to fix one mistake with an even bigger one. He keeps telling everybody (including himself) everything is fine (yeah, no, really, no problem, it's fine, I got it under control, really man, I got this!) while his every single effort he makes collapses underneath his feet.

The fact that his raging gambling addiction leads to a failed robbery and his p*ssed off ex-wife considers him a total a-hole completely eludes him. Everything's fine!

Plan C is an atmospheric film, with the atmosphere being that of the bad neighbourhoods in Amsterdam North (a run down living area for petty criminals and other degenerates). The film is well made (especially considering the usual standards for popular Dutch cinema), and Ruben vd Meer does an amazing job (probably his best so far) as loser-in-denial, self pitying Plasmeyer. His performance alone makes this film worth watching!

Poor old Ronald! Plan C is a tale about a hard pressed cop who's having a bit of a losing streak.

Losing his wife, child, hair and hand after hand of poker, which is a game of skill, not luck you understand.

Sadly, Ronald's 'skill' isn't well, skillful enough so he needs to pull a stroke.

Ronald enlists the help of a small man who calls on the help of a big man and that's when Ronald's 'skill' runs out and perversely, comes back.

Things go from bad to worse then to even worse, much worse then back to bad again before Ronald finds himself thanking lady luck.

Or is that lady skill ?

Excellent cinema from Holland. Or The Netherlands. Depending on your view.

By the Dutch, anyway, go see it... tot ziens.

First of, people who seen a couple of dutch flicks know we that the movie standard in the Netherlands is quite low. Our cinema is known for bad dialog, stage actors, unnecessary naked scenes and floppy story lines. On top of it, because budgets aren't big here, the Filmfund (sponsering from the government) has to backup finance often to even get a movie made here. The same film fund is one of the reasons for the bad filmmaking: this board comes often with silly demands regarding to scripts/story lines before the money comes trough. The film fund people do not always have a background in film (like politics) and needless to say, a work of art does not get better with 20 different views on a subject. A well known example i heard was a great script got turned down because " audiences wouldn't't get it" . Resulting in adding unnecessary voice-overs (or flashbacks) explaining everything we saw in the movie, which made the film direct-to-video material.

Plan C was not supported by the Filmfund, and it is easy one of the better movies made in the Netherlands.

Ruben van der Meer and especially Ton Kas are fun to watch. René van 't Hof is also good, but unfortunately, for a smalltime crook his upper class Dutch accent annoyed me (reminded me of the bum in the movie Amsterdamned who spoke proper and decent Dutch).

The movie itself is funny and witty, and.....pretty much a l copy of Fargo. Could have been Fargo 2, although the plot isn't that complicated. From the father with a debt, the crook and the killer and a job that goes wrong to little details, shots, music, repeating phrases/dialog and if anyone doubts there's the poster in Simon's room of the Checkers game king that is either copied or a reference to the Accordeon king poster in little Scotty Lundergards room.

But, copy, reference or influenced by, this is one of the few dutch movies i would recommend to people and i will be looking forward to the director's new one. Watch it!