Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Ole Christian Madsen
Starring: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lars Brygmann, Albert Arthur Amiryan, Adam Buschard, Jakob Oftebro, Sonja Richter, Nicolaj Kopernikus, Martin Greis-Rosenthal
There are few countries that don't have the date of a terrorist attack
etched into their people's minds. For Denmark it's February 14th, 2015, when
an Islamic fundamentalist attacked a cultural centre hosting a Swedish
cartoonist known for his depictions of the prophet Muhammad. There he killed
one man who attempted to subdue him while injuring five others. Later that
night the attacker shot dead a security guard outside a synagogue before
being gunned down by police himself.
With Powder Keg, director Ole Christian Madsen dramatises the build-up to the
attack with a focus on four key men involved. There's the attacker
himself, Omar Hamid El-Hussain (Albert Arthur Amiryan), newly
released from jail and determined to strike out in the name of the religious
fundamentalism he absorbed in prison. There's Rico (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a SWAT team member whose career is coming to a close as he struggles
with physical injuries. There's Dan Uzan (Adam Buschard), an
unemployed Jewish man struggling to find work due to his Middle Eastern
name. And there's Finn Norgaard (Lars Bryggman), a documentary
filmmaker struggling with his producers.
All four men are based on real life figures from the incident, but none of
them are fleshed out enough to convince as anything more than stereotypes at
best and crude political vessels at worst. As Omar, Amiryan bears a constant
scowl, and there's little to separate him from an Arabic villain in some
gung-ho 1980s action movie. Coster-Waldau's Rico is a descendant of Dirty
Harry, the cop who lives for his job and struggles to function when he's not
taking down criminals. Like Omar, Bryggman's Finn is reduced to his
political beliefs, constantly arguing about free speech. Only Buschard's Dan
escapes the clichés, but he's the most neglected of the quartet and we learn
very little about his life.
The title could refer to any of the four men, as they're all designed to
come off as potential perpetrators of an attack. If you had lived under a
rock for the past decade you might wonder which of the men will be the one
to strike out, such is the manner in which Madsen and his co-screenwriter
Lars Kristian Anderson structure their story. But of course we're
told from the off that this is based on the February 14th attack, so we know
exactly who the antagonist is here.
As you might expect from a Danish production, Powder Keg is
technically polished and exceptionally well acted. It has the feeling of a
story that had to be told at some point, but in its present form it's a
little too close to Paul Haggis's Crash with its crudely
drawn, overlapping characters. It lacks the ticking clock energy of Paul
Greengrass's depictions of similar events, or even Peter Berg's
Patriots Day. Ultimately, Powder Keg never quite explodes, but merely
fizzles out.
