Hold-Up

Nokas -robbery in stavanger centrum in the easter week of 2004 are the largest cash robbery commited in norwegian history, about 7.5 million dollars in norwegian kroner were stolen. this film is a nervewrekingly made drama that unfolded in the ,for me, well known and very public area of the city near stavanger cathedral church.

i saw this film when screened in the theaters, and i must admit that i was bitten by the negative feeling and criticism by making a film that nearly glorified the criminals. what i see now is that the film has an equal glorification of the desperate actions made by the police, who were entraped and passified by the looters and the holyday season of easter. i do also see that itb took the virginity of safe banking in norway , and must also admit that the criminals were daredevilish when committing this robbery

the film product are among the very few heist films that really makes me feel like hanging in a tread, good filming,informative timeline, great acting,and extremely well made sound product. do have in mind the vast negativism by the citizens of stavanger,who had to go through all this again, there were large protest meeting and the political opinion wre vastly against the making of this film, because the film is shot on location, and therefore makes an even more vivid impression of the actions.

its 15 yrs since the nokas, the perputrators are beginning to be released from norwegian prisons these days, i still have this happening in my guts,the loss of a policeman, many wrecked soles among the nokas employees, and within the police , god bless all of them.

if you like heist movies ,do watch nokas, its pure robbery. recommended.

This movie is an interesting project, as it tries, more than anything else, to be accurate. Everything on location, local actors, following the actual events as closely as possible. This is not enough to make it a good movie, but it does make it interesting.

But this is more than any "TV-recreation", because it's obvious that director has a certain ambition here. The movie "Heat" is directly mentioned in this, as it distances itself from it. They wanted to go in a different direction, and they achieved it. Despite a lot of action, it never feels like an action movie.

But it's a challenge to make a movie telling a story from several perspectives at the same time, especially if you don't lend yourself the freedom to change the chronology up a bit to make it more exciting. This leads to the movie jumping back and forwards in time quite a bit. It never really gets confusing, but the solution is not ideal.

While much of the acting is good, there are certain deliveries of dialogue that takes you our of the experience. But considering the project, it's worth going for the local actors.

While coherently depicting the original story of the 2004 robbery of this bank in Stavanger, Norway, I have to advise people that I have been motion sick for almost all the film. The camera is mostly behind an actors shoulder, with focus on the shoulder but in many scenes not on what it actually looks at. This, combined with a lot of hand-held filming, made me feel very sick from watching it. The otherwise very fluently and grippingly told story is lacking some overview shots, and as with so many films these days the camera is very very close to the actors, which in combination with the fast editing can lead to a certain disorientation. The ending scenes do benefit from the absence of all this, and rest burned into memory long after the film ends.

This movie will not necessarily disappoint, but probably surprise those expecting a traditional movie with a plot and character progression etc. Nokas has none of that. Instead this is an extremely detailed reenactment of the robbery, based on witness statements, security camera footage and interviews with police officers and even some of the robbers.

The movie begins with the gang getting dressed and ready to go, and ends with them taking off with the money. Everything in between is basically the big heist scene from the movie Heat, Norwegian style, for 80 minutes.

To understand why anyone would make a movie like this, you'd probably have to be Norwegian. And what I mean by that is that Norway is a very small country where bank robberies of any kind are very uncommon. Needless to say a robbery of this magnitude resulted in an absurd media circus which literally lasted for years. All the robbers became household names and some even got their own "super villain" nicknames, such as "The Shadow" and "The Master Brain". The general fascination only grew as the leader of the gang, while hiding from the police, supposedly ordered the armed robbery of the Munch Museum in Oslo where two of the world's most famous paintings, Scream and Madonna where stolen in order to force the police to shift focus.

Anyway, the movie is great. And what makes it so is the authenticity and the fact that this is what really happened. Normally when movies are based on real events, we get the directors own interpretation of what "might" have happened, often an interpretation full of nonsense and "liberties with the truth" in order to make it work as a movie. But no, this is it. This is as close to a real robbery you'll ever get on the screen. Even small details such as certain gestures, which can be seen in the real security footage, have been carefully duplicated. This makes for an extremely tense ride which will surely keep anyone interested in heist movies on the edge of their seat all the way through.

It's also quite chocking to see exactly how the police engaged the heavily armed robbers in a fierce firefight, in the middle of a town with hundreds of civilians in the area. How they continued to provoke the robbers even after hostages was taken, and finally how it all resulted in the death of a police officer. After watching the movie it seems as an even greater miracle that no one else got killed. Hopefully the Norwegian police have learned exactly why robbers carry heavy firearms. "The Master Brain" even explains it in the beginning of the movie when he says something like: "If the police shows up, just pad your weapons and show them we're the strongest. They won't engage". Well, they did. And it didn't end well.

Nokas is a a paradox that works. This careful reconstruction of Norway's biggest ever robbery avoids all sense of cliché - and opts for one of the better directorial decision seen in a crime / heist movie. No drama, no screaming villains or pretty girls, this is a superbly researched semi-documentary that simple records a five hour period in minutiae - yet it is tense, involving, and probably the best recreation of a bank robbery I have seen.

The Nordic style of speaking and manner is captured well - no-one "acts" they simply are, and here we get almost no character development - it's straight-up storytelling, using a lot of mid-shoulder mid-close and close-ups - it is well shot. The camera work etc; fits this well - it never feels amateurish.

Considering how iconic this real event was - in a country where bank robbery is extremely rare - they could have over-glamourised and made a Nordic Heat; by avoiding that trap they had made cinema, a film's film, and one where integrity respects the events but never loses the sense of adrenalin.

Good film-making all round.