Norwegian comedy about a convict readapting to life outside of prison. This is well crafted comedy. It has an understated and very dry black humor.Reminds me of Fargo but this one is actually funny. From the boss who talks nonstop to the landlady who gets "paid" for her meals.It is intelligently directed and will not irritate you with clichés or boring sequences. To boot you get to immerse yourself in a industrial seamy part of Oslo.This is black humor at its best.RECOMMEND

A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010)Norwegians, even more than Swedes or Danes (at least in their films) seem to be glum, dour sorts. And our leading man, a big Norseman (played by Swedish great Stellan Skarsgard) just out of jail after serving 12 years for murder, is unhappy. But now, getting a job as a mechanic and living in the basement of the mechanic's wife, he is surrounded by such an odd assortment of regular people, his colorfully mundane struggle to survive and get a little along the way is hilarious and moving.It wouldn't be helpful to say exactly what happens--that he crosses up two women, that he tries to reunite with his son who's expecting a baby, that he has to "settle accounts" with some thugs who won't leave him alone. It's how these things happen, and who plays the characters, that makes this film really great fun. And expert fun. This is a tale well told, comic, patient, clever. The plot gets interwoven and impossible in a Shakespearean way (brought to a high pitch of plausible improbability by the delivery scene, you'll see), and so everything is tightly controlled. Even the music is a parody of itself, somehow, a light and spasmodic jazz funk score that helps make clear all of this is a little bit in fun, even when it gets awful in a couple parts.The characters here are unpretty types, either homely or ravaged or just so maladjusted we see only their peculiarities. And that's a lot of the charm. There's no artificial glitz, no idealizing characters, no beauty on the side drawing the main character from the reality around him. You grow to identify with the people for who they are, and even though there is a comic airiness throughout, these people become very real, too. It's a delightful result, and I don't use the word delightful much any more. Don't miss it.

The film was basically well-reviewed, and I wanted to see Skarsgard in a lead role speaking his original language (then I found out he's Swedish, so speaking Norwegian is probably not his most comfortable language to speak either!).I found it hard to get into at first...I wasn't sure this was supposed to be intentionally humorous at first, but then it became pretty obvious that this was the case.It's definitely a very quirky film, and my wife and I were surprised how often this guy could get laid! But my 6 rating shows that although I thought it was decent, it's nothing to go out of your way for.P.S. - Am I the only guy who thought that Skarsgard looked like William Hurt in this film?

Having seen many brutal films in my 50+ years of movie-watching (around twenty thousand films or more), I finally get to see the film in which the truly bad man, the business-man, get shot. It was a very long wait indeed. The devil lies and deceives - so it is said in the fairy-tale by the Grim Brothers (When Death was the Godfather or Der Gevatter Tod). We are witnessing a time in which more and more people understand who "the devil" really is: the entity that causes man to raise havoc by deception and intimidation. Intentionally or unintentionally (let's give the story-teller "poetic license") this film delivers clarity on whom we should truly be apprehensive about. The fool with the gun is to be blamed but truly dangerous is the intimidating deceiver in the background, going about his everyday usual "business" in which everyone is a mean to his goals and no more than that. Intentionally or unintentionally - this is still a masterpiece.