Friday 25 July 2014

"Northwest" (The Guardian 25/07/14)


Northwest **
Dir: Michael Noer. With: Casper Dyekjaer Giese, Oscar Dyekjaer Giese, Lena Maria Christensen. 91 mins. Cert: 15

The latest item carried over on the Scandie crime wave forsakes chunky-knit sweaters for a notional harder edge, offering a shruggingly naturalistic study of a teenage catburglar caught between rival factions on the Copenhagen periphery. Much of Michael Noer’s film feels anaemic: the switchback plotting that sees bullet-headed antihero Casper (Casper Dyekjaer Giese) become a figure of empathy was put over with greater force and visual flair by Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher films. Some site-specific design porn persists – notably in Casper’s quest for a PH Artichoke lamp – but it chiefly resembles that scrappy posturing by which our own film industry habitually bids for street cred. 

Northwest opens in selected cinemas from today.

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