It's not often you get a big Danish film as they are usually hyper-low budget Dogme-fests. Despite being tiny in Hollywood terms, the scale of Flame and Citron (a film about Danish resistance fighters in the second world war), in perspective is refreshingly grand. It stars Thure Lindhardt and Mads Mikkelsen as the eponymous underground figures who progress from killing Danes who are collaberating with the Nazis to going after the Germans themselves.
There are a couple of very interesting aspects of this film, the first is that the two men have no idea who to trust, even the people giving them orders come in for suspicion as well as their comrades. This stops it being the bog-standard good vs. evil thing and adds a lot of grey area. The second very fine part of this film is the character of Flame - he consistently gets talked round by his perspective victims and his characterisation is both consistent and interesting. Sadly the same cannot be said of Mikkelsen's Citron, there are leaps in his character which aren't adequately explained but it doesn't derail the film.
The problems the film faces stem from the writing, certain plot strands are left in the air, the characterisation in general isn't water-tight, but there's more than enough there for everyone involved to get their teeth into. The score is very nice, atmospheric and brooding, it's shot well in an anti-Wong Kar-Wai kind of way but it doesn't move particularly freely. That said though it is a very good watch. Lindhardt has the best character and really takes the ball and runs with it, Mads is very bland in comparison but he has much less to work with. A subplot with Stine Stengade (who has a touch of the Helena Christensens) again jumps forward too quickly to be truly satisfactory but it does work with the mood and feel of the piece.
A lot of films are recalled by this one, it reminded me of everything from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Reconstruction to La señal and White Heat in terms of the relationships between the characters and the setting. It may not be the most accurate historically (certain things just *feel* like the filmmakers are playing fast and loose with the truth) but it is extremely interesting because it's not a topic that is incredibly well known outside of its native region. There are a lot of potential traps a film like this could possibly fall into given the subject matter but it's more the nuts and bolts of the storytelling and characterisation that stop it being a great film rather than the usual types of things that bring this kind of film down. Tiny release, more than worth checking out if war/resistance films are your kind of thing though.