This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 15, 2010 - A Somewhat Gentle Man
Complete with paunch, receding hairline and wispy ponytail, the superb Stellan Skarsgaard plays Ulrik, "a somewhat gentle man" released from prison after serving 12 years for murder. His gangster boss sets him up with a job as a car mechanic and in a miserable basement apartment. In return, he's asked for one small favor -- to kill the man who ratted on him and landed him in prison.
Will Ulrik or won't he?
That question propels the story, but the movie takes plenty of amusing and bizarre detours along the way. There's the restaurant owner -- and arms dealer -- who's furious that his chef won't put fermented trout sushi on the menu. And Ulrik's homely landlady who offers him nightly dinner and "companionship" -- all the while thanking God, loudly and repeatedly. And the owner of the car repair shop who offers his take on life in brisk, succinct summations -- "And that's the way I see it."
And, of course, there's Ulrik himself. Paunchy, pasty and passive, he's an unlikely Casanova, and at least half of the movie's humor comes from his improbable effect on women. But he's also a man desperate to repair his estranged relationship with his son but not quite sure how. (In one poignant scene, the normally dour Ulrik spies on his son and pregnant daughter-in-law and breaks out in joyful laughter just observing their happiness.)
Ultimately, these ruptured relationships drive Ulrik to his fateful decision.
This quirky dramedy may borrow liberally from the conflicted hitmen of "In Bruges," the oddball conversations between petty crooks in "Pulp Fiction," and the laconic strangeness of "Fargo." But thanks largely to Skarsgaard's performance, this tale about a Norwegian lowlife has a life of its own.
-- Review by Susan Hegger
Freedom Riders
In a straightforward and compelling way, using dozens of interviews with participants, eye-witnesses and historians and a wealth of historic film footage and still photographs, "Freedom Riders" tells the extraordinary story of the hundreds of blacks and whites who faced beatings, imprisonment, incendiary bombs and murder by traveling through the South in 1961 in racially mixed groups.
When the first two buses of Freedom Riders were halted by violence in Alabama, more groups of blacks and whites rode into the Deep South, refusing to surrender their ideals and remaining non-violent in the face of repeated attacks and arrests. The buses kept coming until the Kennedy administration was forced to act to protect American citizens and enforce federal anti-segregation laws.
Documentarian Stanley Nelson includes some remarkable film footage of Dr. Martin Luther King speaking at a church in Montgomery, Ala., a church packed with thousands of Freedom Riders and their supporters that was under siege from Ku Klux Klan-inspired rioters.
Nelson also interviewed John Patterson, who in 1961 was the segregationist governor of Alabama, and John Seigenthaler, special assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was badly beaten while observing the Freedom Rides and reporting to Kennedy in Washington.
The result is a journalistic triumph, a documentary that is both heartbreaking and inspiring, and thoroughly convincing.
-- Reviewed by Harper Barnes
Harper Barnes is the Beacon movie reviewer.