Well, this movie was... not great, but a bit of a peculiar (using the word "funny" here would give a wrong impression, since the movie is not half as funny as it thinks it is) experience.
Historically, the Stockholm blood-bath was an infamous event where the Danish army and royalty executed a big group of Swedish aristocrats, so (the saying goes) the street were flowing with blood. Mostly, the legacy of this event has been that it is shameful for Denmark to have perpetrated it, and a good reason for Sweden to hate us (I am Danish, you see). However, seen in a modern and progressive light, was it all that bad to kill off a portion of the oppressive elite? Was it really such a slight to the common people of Sweden?
Anyway, when I went into this movie I hadn't read anything about it, other than that it had some Danish actors in it - so I suffered from the misimpression (is that a word?) that it was actually a Danish-produced movie! And since the Danes in it are presented as cartoonishly evil, I thought it was kind of a funny self-satire on the "Danish" film-makers' part. Even though I didn't like the immature vulgarities of it, I thought it was a redeeming feature of the movie. In my defense, I believed the movie to be Danish-produced because this exact style of humor is (sadly) extremely wide-spread in Danish movies.
But then, as the end credits rolled I realized it was a Swedish-produced movie - meaning that the oh-so-good Swedish characters and the oh-so-evil Danish characters were just the usual bunch of clichés found whenever some country makes a movie about their (past or present) enemies. No self-satire; just caricatured and unnuanced finger-pointing at the easy targets. [EDIT: It actually turns out that the movie is a Swedish/Danish co-production, so I guess the self-satire is there after all. Except that the screenwriters are Norwegian, which is kind of hilarious.]
To be honest, whether the movie were Danish or Swedish-produced doesn't change my rating of it. The attempted comedy fell flat in any case (you see, all the Swedish characters were dead serious), and the movie didn't know whether to be a comedy or a historical movie. It was also surprising to me that it was in English, since it concerns Danish and Swedish events, and starring (mostly) Nordic actors. The movie indeed feels made for international streaming; it has many of those hallmarks of sloppy, rushed and mediocre streaming service content.
There are two reasons I'm not rating this movie even lower. The first is the female actors, which were very good and admirable. It's a great shame that they are being disrespected by being forced to be part of a movie more dominated by immature and misogynist male "humor". The Freja character reminded enormously of Miranda Otto's character from Lord of the Rings (Eowyn? Was that her name?), and was a strong character, if perhaps not super-realistic in the historical setting.
The other redeeming feature of the movie is that it does start some thoughts about what happened in the in/famous event, and does make us check it out on Wikipedia, at least. As they say at the beginning of the movie, some of this actually happened.
Historically, the Stockholm blood-bath was an infamous event where the Danish army and royalty executed a big group of Swedish aristocrats, so (the saying goes) the street were flowing with blood. Mostly, the legacy of this event has been that it is shameful for Denmark to have perpetrated it, and a good reason for Sweden to hate us (I am Danish, you see). However, seen in a modern and progressive light, was it all that bad to kill off a portion of the oppressive elite? Was it really such a slight to the common people of Sweden?
Anyway, when I went into this movie I hadn't read anything about it, other than that it had some Danish actors in it - so I suffered from the misimpression (is that a word?) that it was actually a Danish-produced movie! And since the Danes in it are presented as cartoonishly evil, I thought it was kind of a funny self-satire on the "Danish" film-makers' part. Even though I didn't like the immature vulgarities of it, I thought it was a redeeming feature of the movie. In my defense, I believed the movie to be Danish-produced because this exact style of humor is (sadly) extremely wide-spread in Danish movies.
But then, as the end credits rolled I realized it was a Swedish-produced movie - meaning that the oh-so-good Swedish characters and the oh-so-evil Danish characters were just the usual bunch of clichés found whenever some country makes a movie about their (past or present) enemies. No self-satire; just caricatured and unnuanced finger-pointing at the easy targets. [EDIT: It actually turns out that the movie is a Swedish/Danish co-production, so I guess the self-satire is there after all. Except that the screenwriters are Norwegian, which is kind of hilarious.]
To be honest, whether the movie were Danish or Swedish-produced doesn't change my rating of it. The attempted comedy fell flat in any case (you see, all the Swedish characters were dead serious), and the movie didn't know whether to be a comedy or a historical movie. It was also surprising to me that it was in English, since it concerns Danish and Swedish events, and starring (mostly) Nordic actors. The movie indeed feels made for international streaming; it has many of those hallmarks of sloppy, rushed and mediocre streaming service content.
There are two reasons I'm not rating this movie even lower. The first is the female actors, which were very good and admirable. It's a great shame that they are being disrespected by being forced to be part of a movie more dominated by immature and misogynist male "humor". The Freja character reminded enormously of Miranda Otto's character from Lord of the Rings (Eowyn? Was that her name?), and was a strong character, if perhaps not super-realistic in the historical setting.
The other redeeming feature of the movie is that it does start some thoughts about what happened in the in/famous event, and does make us check it out on Wikipedia, at least. As they say at the beginning of the movie, some of this actually happened.