BEFORE: Mark Strong carries over from "Shazam!" - I already used Mark Strong as a link once this month, to get from "Sunshine" to "The Young Victoria", and now he's back for another 3 films. That's sort of been the hardest thing for me to learn about linking films by actor, to not freak out when I can't put ALL the films with one actor together. It's OK to cover only SOME of the films with an actor and leave off one or two, especially if I need those films to make another connection down the road - it's a more holistic approach, I'm thinking long-term or big picture, and that's the process by which I got my first Perfect Year in 2019. Let's see if that approach works again in 2020.
THE PLOT: Based on the absurd but true 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis in Stockholm that was documented in the New Yorker as the origin of "Stockholm Syndrome".
AFTER: This film is based on a real 1973 bank robbery, which eventually led psychologists to the syndrome named after it, which occurs when people held captive empathize with their captors or develop some kind of romantic feelings for them. Outside Sweden, this feeling is known as "Stockholm Syndrome", but within Sweden, it was first called Norrmalmstorg syndrome, named after the square where the bank robbery took place. I guess the citizens of Sweden felt they didn't want people to think of Stockholm as a city where people keep falling in love with their abusers, like if you walk around the city you 're going to see a bunch of kidnappings and hostage situations as some kind of bizarre courtship ritual?
Why do people do this, have sympathy for the people holding them captive? Is it just a survival strategy, or is it just a side-effect of our brains asking the question, "How could another person DO this, what led to this behavior?" Or are we so desperate for human contact that we'll form a bond with just about anyone, including someone trying to hurt us? I guess it doesn't matter HOW you meet your love partners in the end, but wouldn't this make an awkward story to tell your grandchildren, if the relationship somehow turns out to be a lasting one? I guess the bottom line is, the more time you spend with anyone, even your captor or abuser, the more likely you are to find things you have in common with them, and that leads to familiarity, and that leads to empathy. The reverse is true also, the more time you spend apart from someone you care about, the more likely you are to develop different interests and find things that you DON'T have in common, and that leads to disassociation and possibly, eventually, the disbanding of relations or further separation.
Relationships are irrational - and so are hostage crises, who's to say what is and isn't an appropriate emotional response to them? Let's just agree that this happens, it's a valid thing, and that's why sometimes hostages won't testify in court later against their captors. Moving on to the film, rather than the syndrome.
What's a little weird here is an American (non-Swedish) actor blatantly playing a Swedish bank-robber named Lars (all names changed from the original robbery, but still) and at first he's mistaken for a different bank robber named Kaj. What's also weird is seeing usually bald actor Mark Strong with long, black hair. Lars wears a wig to pretend to be Kaj, but Mark's wearing a wig to pretend to be Gunnar, and I guess Gunnar really is supposed to have hair. Gunnar's in prison at the start of the film, but one of Lars' demands is that Gunnar be released from prison and brought to the bank, along with 1 million dollars - er, I mean kroner?
The cops were on the scene from the start, like an undercover detective was just walking by when he saw people fleeing from the bank, so he stepped in and tried to defuse the situation, but failed. Then the chief of police showed up, and set up a tactical team on the second floor of the bank building. Negotiations continued as the robbers threatened to kill the hostages, only after making the threats to the police, the robbers would chat with the hostages and play cribbage to pass the time. Ah, this is where we maybe start to see a bit of a disconnect, acting one way when the cops are listening and another way after they leave the room.
It's sort of a staple of heist movies that not everything goes according to plan - "Dog Day Afternoon" is the classic, but "Heist" is a perfect recent example, where a team of casino robbers had to hijack a bus when their getaway driver got nervous and took off. Here it's tough to say whether Lars' original plan was doomed to fail because of his demands - what if the police couldn't find the same Ford Mustang that Steve McQueen drove in "Bullitt"? Wouldn't it have been better to already have that car standing by, and just tell the cops where to find it in the parking lot, and bring it around to the bank's front entrance?
It was also a very poor plan to round up the hostages and sit with them in the bank vault - it's a safe place to hole up, sure, until you realize that all the police have to do is walk into the bank and lock the robbers IN the vault. They really should have seen that coming. This also sets up the comic situation where the police have to drill into the bank vault just to release tear gas to disable the robbers. Meanwhile, by this point the hostages have fallen prey to the Stockholm syndrome, so they're practically functioning as accomplishes, they'll do just about anything as long as it increases their chances of surviving the incident.
The real Gunnar testified that all of his actions were done to save hostages, and his conviction was later overturned, and later he did become friends with one of the hostages. The real Lars served 10 years for the robbery attempt, and he later got engaged, but contrary to popular belief, his fiancée was NOT one of the hostages from the Kreditbanken. He later committed more crimes, and evaded capture by Swedish authorities for 10 years - and in 2006, when he tried to turn himself in, he was told that the police were no longer actively pursuing charges against him. Sweden sounds like a pretty weird country.
Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Born to Be Blue"), Noomi Rapace (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Christopher Heyerdahl (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Bea Santos (last seen in "Kodachrome"), Mark Rendall (last seen in "Shimmer Lake"), Ian Matthews (last seen in "The Captive"), John Ralston, Shanti Roney, Christopher Wagelin, Throbjorn Harr with archive footage of Richard Nixon (last seen in "Dogville")
RATING: 5 out of 10 bullet-proof vests
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