The Guild

But alas, mind you, this could have been a very good movie..

What this film suffers from, and so many other Swedish contemporary films, are the lack of individuality. The glances towards Hollywood are obvious especially in the editing and the cliché's in manuscript. The script is the biggest flaw here. The historical angle (even though a bit resculpted) works fine, but the dialog is absolutely horrible. And as mentioned the cliché's and straight forward plot could have (and has been) stolen from many American adventurefilms. The camera work are very good, the mis-en-scene works fine as well even though the budget was low. Some of the wholeness and flow is disrupted and destroyed from the editing, especially in the fighting scenes. It seems that sometimes the producer has stepped in and said "Too little action here boys, fix that!" The result is just bad version of Matrix crosscutting. Sound works fine as well, works fine on surround. The music tends to be a bit repetitive though. The last twenty minutes plays the same "tick-tock" inspired music that has been in every Swedish TV- production since times beginning. (A pedagogical way to show the viewer that time is of essence. Feel free to get stressed.)

All in all it works as a film made for TV. There are some good actors here but they often get nowhere with their twodimensional characters and lousy dialog.

Biggest plus: A daring try to make film out of Swedish history. Biggest minus: The scriptwriter should be flogged.

4/10

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 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.

"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.

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!