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War/courtroom drama set in Afghanistan that puts decision-making and accountability when under fire under scrutiny.
Pilou Asbęk gives his usual solid performance in the central role, he never strikes me as someone with a particularly large range but does have these types of characters pretty much nailed imo, and those in support are generally decent. As a film of two halves both parts work reasonably well without either really excelling - for me the initial 'war' part is a little drawn-out and whilst the subsequent 'courtroom half' may provide food for thought it perhaps could have been expanded further. The sequences focusing on family life dotted throughout are a necessary part but also feel a little overplayed to me.
Sadly some of the hand-held camerawork is rather off-putting, I'm not much of a fan of 'shaky-cam' in the first place but can understand it's use in certain scenarios to impart a sense of frenetic movement or chaos - outside of those though I think it's far more often indicative of budgetary constraints than any artistic choice. Thankfully most of the camerawork is steady enough though with only relatively few scenes impacted detrimentally.
A War is a decent enough watch that may mainly sit on the moral fence, leaving viewers to form their own opinions on what transpires, but the situation is a believable and interesting one that for the most part is presented acceptably so I'm happy to award it a
Krigen
[A War]
Tobias Lindholm
2015
[A War]
Tobias Lindholm
2015
War/courtroom drama set in Afghanistan that puts decision-making and accountability when under fire under scrutiny.
Pilou Asbęk gives his usual solid performance in the central role, he never strikes me as someone with a particularly large range but does have these types of characters pretty much nailed imo, and those in support are generally decent. As a film of two halves both parts work reasonably well without either really excelling - for me the initial 'war' part is a little drawn-out and whilst the subsequent 'courtroom half' may provide food for thought it perhaps could have been expanded further. The sequences focusing on family life dotted throughout are a necessary part but also feel a little overplayed to me.
Sadly some of the hand-held camerawork is rather off-putting, I'm not much of a fan of 'shaky-cam' in the first place but can understand it's use in certain scenarios to impart a sense of frenetic movement or chaos - outside of those though I think it's far more often indicative of budgetary constraints than any artistic choice. Thankfully most of the camerawork is steady enough though with only relatively few scenes impacted detrimentally.
A War is a decent enough watch that may mainly sit on the moral fence, leaving viewers to form their own opinions on what transpires, but the situation is a believable and interesting one that for the most part is presented acceptably so I'm happy to award it a