Excellent, Without a doubt!!

As Good As It Gets

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Blistering performances.

I was able to catch this film at AFM, and was truly blown away. Mans Marlind & Bjorn Stein do an excellent job making this unique film visually stunning and extremely entertaining. The Variety review hits the nail on the head when it describes it as "fast paced, visually exciting and with enough good plot twists to satisfy the most jaded film-goer, the picture has all the makings of a cult classic". I couldn't have said it better myself. The acting is also very strong. Eric Ericson is fantastic in his demanding role as DD, and it was great to see Eva Rose in such a tough-girl role. I strongly recommend this film.

Don't get me wrong. This is an important film (for Sweden especially as it's so rare to see a Swedish sci-fi that actually lives up to it's title) and the visual style takes influences from a bunch of ground-braking classics; OldBoy, Fight Club, Se7en, The Terminator, 28 Days Later and many more (though these references feel more like homages rather than bad rip-offs and so it just goes to show that the film was made by people who really just like movies in general). Anyway, on with the show. The film follows DD - a hip guy hanging with all the right people and living the trendy life of a Stockholm-journalist - who suddenly has his path crossed by Lova, who seems more like a superhero than an actual Swedish girl (and yeah, I know what Swedish girls look like in general). She disappears as fast as she arrived and DD goes home to his bachelor pad.Later on she shows up at his door, giving him an address to visit if things start to go bad. And eventually, they do (of course). When trying to find Lova again he comes across a strange box and is forced to flee the scene of a shoot-out. Now, on the run from the cops, and also from the people originally chasing Lova, he must figure out the secret of the box and manage to open it before it's to late. This was an interesting plot to say the least and I really enjoyed the work that these directors did in the past. Unfortunetely, the wonderful visual styles used here don't quite make up for the fact that the story ends up with too many loose ends. It could have been a brilliant film but, in the end, the final answer to what's happened during this hour-and-a-half (or whatever) just leave a whirlwind of new questions stirred up in the backwaters of the credits.Sorry guys, I really wanted this to work as something more than just eye-candy :(

First of all the actors. Sasha Becker, who I have never seen before, does an excellent job. He holds the movie together nicely and goes through a variety of moods flawlessly. Now for the rest of the cast... Jonas Karlsson, an actor who I normally respect, is horribly cast for this movie and the role as the "bad guy". With or without a scar (hah) by his right eye. Eva Röse is not only poorly casted in her role but does a terrible job, overacting every single line she does. Another major problem with this movie is that it tries to much. It's like they added comic-book / matrix / fight club / anime / computer game references and scenes in the end just to be the flavor of the month and it totally destroys this movie! If all of that was removed and the tempo was actually slower the movie would benefit greatly. I mean come on,.. jumping over laser scenes and random running with ninjas hunting you in the midst of a otherwise good movie. Granted, the script steals a hell of a lot of influences (ripping of?) from other movies (butterfly effect / hell raiser / matrix etc) but it's core is good. Sadly this is like watching 3 movies in one with only one being good and them pulling different ways and you almost feel like jamming a fork into your leg every time you see a scene that apparently "has to be there" with no intent but to show that the movie is hip. Cudos has to go to the art department and the Cinematography guy in charge Linus Sandgren cause *that* work is totally flawless. I left with a bitter taste of what this movie could have been LIKE and what a waste of talent of the cinematography and lead actor it had been.

I just came home from the the first screening of this movie at the Stockholm Film Festival and I must say I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I normally despise new Swedish movies, but since the directors of this movie had claimed they wanted to try something rather different from what we are used to I decided to give it a shot. What is there to say, this is the best Swedish film I have seen (recent made movies that is). The acting is great, but the film at some times get almost amusing when the actors start spitting one-liners that doesn't fit the Swedish language. The story isn't the most original ever but it is performed well, except for the comic book cut scenes which I found very disturbing. The camera-work is superb and the directors has probably looked at films like Seven, Fight Club, Memento and perhaps even Britney Spears video for her song Toxic ^__^. So please, show the movie makers in Sweden that we as an audience is ready for something else than relation based nature romantic dramas with bad acting. Go see it!