Festival cause célèbre Ole Christian Madsen -- the director of critically championed prior efforts including Kira's Reason (2001) and Prague (2006) -- turns away from the domestic drama that characterized his earlier filmography with this unusual period thriller, adapted from historical events. Thure Lindhardt and Mads Mikkelsen star, respectively, as Flame and Citron. As two members of the anti-Nazi Danish resistance during the Second World War, their activities predominantly consist of hunting
down and rubbing out Denmark's most prominent Nazi collaborators, and thus furthering the way for the Allied cause. Although Madsen opts for conventional subject matter here, and even a traditional perspective given his film's anti-Nazi stance, his deglamorized presentation retains a certain uniqueness, with the two main characters presented not as conventional heroes, but thoroughly desperate characters from the dregs of society with nothing left to lose except for their own lives -- and sociopaths prone to the most sadistic acts of ultraviolence against the enemy. Citron fares worst, as an utterly irredeemable alcoholic and drug addict, crumbling beneath the weight of a miserable, rotten marriage and a less-than-glowing relationship with his young daughter. In touting the film, Madsen openly cited Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (1969) as one of his key influences. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
...a film noir set in wartime where there's moral ambiguity almost everywhere you look as well as large measures of heroism, treachery and ordinary human failings.
It winds its way through a tricky, fact-based plot that's sometimes reminiscent of film noir. At the center is a bewitching femme fatale whose allegiances and motives are less than clear.
A drop-dead gorgeous period noir, rife with paranoia, femmes fatales, and good men inexorably sinking into the bloody mire and opaque texture of life (and death) during wartime.
Unfortunately, although it was supposedly inspired by the morally conflicted French Resistance masterpiece Army of Shadows, Flame fizzles more than it flames.
A suspenseful, often riverting drama of World War II resistance that combines old-fashioned virtues of craft and style with a more modern sense of nuance and complexity.
Well....all in all I thought that this movie was really good. Strong acting. Strong production. Strong true story. BUT, in between the action parts it really kind of dragged. Plus, I think they could have shaved off maybe 30 min or so. That being said, this is one of my favorite subjects, and this movie really did try
hard to tell an excellent story. Word of advice: Dont watch this and Benjamin Button in the same day. Both really good movies, but you may have to take a nap in between the two.
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