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 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.

It's a good film. I just watched and expected more or less a cheesy adventure. And while the first 40 minutes of the film are as if lifted from a Hollywood adventure movie, it then unravels into something more intriguing and interesting. The ending is definitely worth waiting for. Lots of twists as well.

Swedish themes surge through the entire film, however. These might be hard to pick up for a non-Swede but they are there. The Swedish idea of pacifism and neutrality shows itself in form of the king (Gustaf Skarsgård) Carl XI, who only wants to kick the Danes out of his lands and sign a peace treaty. Evil, on the other hand, are not the Danes, but rather a greedy Nobleman who wants to conquer Denmark and all the states surrounding the Baltic Sea. This is a rather modern conception as well. Back then, Denmark and Sweden WERE enemies. And they probably did one-another as "evil".

The production value is surprisingly high. I was expecting something really poor in terms of... everything really. But the film team really pulled it off well. My only gripe is that in certain scenes where extras are involved, they pull of a really bad acting job. I don't know why, but Swedish filmmakers don't seem to give the same heart and soul into their extras as, say, Hollywood producers would.

In any case, the story is good. Keeps you on your toes wondering what will happen next. It's not always perfectly paced, however. I found the film to pace badly towards the middle. But after awhile it comes back in full swing.

Watch it if you want to see a good adventure. Swedish people probably get to hung up on the fact that it's "Swedish" and thus dismiss it outright before they even see it. But it's good! Surprisingly good, actually. So if you're Swedish and have already decided that you're going to hate this film, don't bother. If you want a good historical adventure, on the other hand, then watch this!

Sorry, must have missed it as a mini. You do mean mini as a min-series on TV don't you? I only saw it as a 2h40m movie of DVD and it was superb. I have alway envisioned Snapphanar as the ultimate freedom-fighters even though I'm a Swede to the death. This movie puts my priorities to shame when you see what atrocities the Swedish army condoned to get the job done, the job being showing the farmers of Skåne what would happen if they supported the Danish army and the Swedes would win the war war. To all you non-swedes, this movie is a cross between The Patriot and Sleepy Hollow, aka Time Well Spent. Of course there is no Gibson or Depp in this one, and it's in a foreign language, but hey!, you might enjoy it anyway =)

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!