Hævnen 2010

Tom Long, Detroit News: Simply put, this would be a better world if there were more films like In a Better World. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: It's a well-directed, gorgeous, sensitively acted film about some essential human questions ... Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Everything about "In a Better World" feels just a little too easy: a better movie might have let in more of the messiness of the world as it is. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Bier dramatizes our ambivalence so earnestly that it's tempting to give her awards rather than admit that the movie is a crushing bore. Read more

John Anderson, Wall Street Journal: "In a Better World" is a perfectly functional drama with decent performances, lots of beautiful visuals, music that would make a stack of pancakes swoon, and a tidy enough ending for television. And you can see why it won an Oscar. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: How does a movie about two boys fighting back against a schoolyard bully in Denmark wind up in a refugee camp in Africa? By overreaching, badly. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Bier's well-meaning film isn't sterile, but she approaches the material from a distance. Perhaps that's by design, to make us observers, but the story cries out for more connection. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: The more its makers ... draw cheap contrasts between savagery and civility the less civil and more savage toward them you begin to feel. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: I hate to rap this serious-minded filmmaker, but I'm beginning to wonder whether her scripts aren't better realized when they're held in check, whether by Hollywood star power (Things We Lost in the Fire) or by the hand of another director (Open Hearts). Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: Susanne Bier's latest meditation on grief and the boundaries of family -- which won this year's foreign-film Oscar -- is a tough piece of work, subtle in some ways, obvious in others, viscerally affecting throughout. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Despite its overweening tone of serioso realism, the movie exhibits little or no understanding of how real people actually behave. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: In a Better World, Denmark's Oscar winner for best foreign-language film, boasts the kind of patiently constructed narrative that keeps you leaning forward and marveling at how all the pieces connect. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: An ethically ambitious, morally thoughtful - and deeply vexing - drama about the fragility of civil order and the menace of the lawless. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Bier's inviting film asks but doesn't answer: Is the male urge for violence innate? Is it passed from father to son? And if it is, how can we teach our children well? Read more

David Germain, Associated Press: In a Better World demonstrates Danish director Susanne Biers' supreme gift at telling the gloomiest of stories that, while not exactly winding up in feel-good territory, at least finish with a strong affirmation of the decent things in life. Read more

Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter: A stirring treatise on the nature of violence from the Danish director of After the Wedding. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Bier has a potent gift for turning abstract, moral questions like these into edge-of-your-seat compelling dramas that examine, with devastating effect, the complex web of feelings that make us who we are. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Asks worthwhile questions about how fathers can best lead their sons, about the expectations placed on men by society and about their struggles with their inner violent impulses, which can lay so dormant and unnoticed, then, in a frightening rush, explode Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: Veers perilously close to the programmatic, ever more so as the plot proceeds, and there are scenes where we seem to be observing a moral demonstration as much as a drama; yet the movie does retain grip and grace... Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: If this is what Denmark dismisses as safe middlebrow fare, please, export it here. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: There's sufficient craft that you go along with the twists, even as director Susanne Bier is wrapping things up with a neatly tied bow. But in a better world, In a Better World would be a better movie. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Director Susanne Bier's chilly morality play is slow to get started, but once established, its three parallel stories comment provocatively on one another. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: [An] urgent and compassionate thriller about the vicious cycle of aggression and revenge. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: I admired Bier's "Things We Lost in the Fire" and her Danish and American versions of "Brothers," but here her method is too foregrounded. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Despite detours into sentiment and preaching, In a Better World is an emotional powerhouse. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Bier's perceptive, handsomely shot Oscar-winner respects our intelligence, patiently ratcheting up the tension while drawing didactic parallels between Third World ethnic reprisals and the escalating feud in Denmark. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Despite some weaknesses as both a film and a parable, "In a Better World" is a potent provocation. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: [This] encasing parable is brand new and immediately provocative. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: True, the resolutions on offer seem conventionally pat, yet the tough questions stay with you in an absorbing drama which pushes the viewer's buttons with effective intelligence. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Bathed in a golden light that contrasts with the film's dark emotional currents, In a Better World brilliantly dramatizes the vexing problem of trying to do right in a world of situational ethics. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: A powerful contempo drama exploring behavioral connections between episodes of schoolyard bullying at home and escalating tribal violence abroad. Read more

Ella Taylor, Village Voice: Bier surely means well, but the road to compassion porn is paved with noble intentions, laced with a nakedly commercial appeal that flatters moviegoers with a vision of the West as Africa's savior from itself. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Methodically paced and superbly staged to create a mounting sense of dread, "In a Better World" plays like a testosterone overdose by slow drip. Read more