Fear Me Not

Both the screenwriter and director try to deceive the viewer and present them with false clues to understand the motivation of the main character. In principle, it is one of the forms of the disease called the mid-life crisis. The awareness that life is slipping through your fingers, gnawing at you from a wrong life choice, bitterness, and the inability to get out of the programmed ride can gradually lead to hatred and becoming short-circuited. Mikael may not have achieved what Michael Douglas did in Falling Down within a few hours, but his gradual descent into damnation is possibly even more chilling. Kristian Levring plays with changing moods and heads toward increasingly oppressive positions, and Ulrich Thomsen excels in one of his typical roles, and he undoubtedly has a talent for similar dark and destructive characters. Overall impression: 75%. (07/10/2015)

The aftertaste of an otherwise cultured film is bitter. With emotions, question marks and twists, the theme sounds lost in the chilly atmosphere of the film. The viewer is not allowed access to the heart of the action, but at the same time he is not even saturated with a cold analytical analysis of evil in man. On the scale between Lars von Trier's emotional manipulation and Michael Haneke's scientific analysis, Levring has strayed somewhere into the grey area, where the gripping motifs lose their sharp edges and the characters wander the expressive landscape of the Danish countryside. Although he successfully avoided self-purpose and insubstantiality, the filmmaker remained trapped behind the polished glass of his film. (24/07/2010)

A hell of a psychological movie. There’s no other way to put it. For a long time, I thought about whether I should give the movie a four-star review, but in the end I went with five stars because this movie will have you thinking – and not only for a couple of minutes or hours. I’ve been thinking about the movie ever since I saw it a couple of days ago. It’s crazy – the power an ordinary word can have over the psyche of each and every one of us. Ulrich Thomsen did a really good job portraying his character. He was a bit weird already at the beginning of the movie. A bit quiet, but he was a more or less nice guy. But then an absolute psychological terror breaks out and you won’t feel very good. Towards the end you will get one shock and then another one at the very end. The ending at the Prague Main Train Station will then be accepted by my compatriots with joy because there is nothing else left at that point. Are we living real lives, the lives we want to live, or are we locked in a bubble that surrounded us through our acceptance of various facts that came to pass and that we would rather accept than confront? (05/10/2014)