Darkland

Darkland is built on the primitive premise of vengeance for a dead brother, similar to Kickboxer with Van Damme, but set in contemporary Copenhagen. The avenger is a polite doctor resembling an Iraqi Vin Diesel, who arms himself and sits astride a motorcycle. There is nothing to criticize here from the technical point of view, just the overall naïveté. It’s ironic that Refn’s Pusher trilogy offers a much more creative and distinctive triple portrait characters from the wrong side of the law in the Danish setting. [Sitges FF] (11.10.2017)

I liked this. The Danes made their own version of The Punisher with an actor who looks like Vin Diesel and that's enough to satisfy me. The main character is a successful heart surgeon who loses his brother because he got involved in organized crime, and decides to take the law into his own hands, nothing original but I enjoyed it. There’s more action in the second half and is quite gritty, though some may mind the faster editing. The villain played by Dulfi Al- Jabour is very sleazy to unpleasant, I wished him death from start to finish, and there are a few suspenseful moments, so for me a solid action thriller from Denmark. 80% (28.02.2018)

Fenar Ahmad is not a complete failure and obviously knows where to draw inspiration from, but the task he set for himself proved to be beyond his abilities. The story of revenge for the loss of a loved one is one of the basic motifs of genre cinema, and the director wanted to make it unique by combining the action genre, which is usually found in B movies, with an artistic approach. The result is a mishmash that satisfies few people. The only real positive aspect is the presence of charismatic Dar Salim in the lead role, who seems to have been born for this type of role. In the first half, the film is more realistic and psychologically developed than usual, but it is also slower. The transformation of a top surgeon into a warrior who eliminates one trained killer after another is unbelievable, and the moments when the film should build up tension are clichéd and routine. As the minutes go by, it becomes clear that the film lacks intelligence, and Darkland ultimately comes across as an interchangeable product that could have been made anywhere and that you have probably seen multiple times before. It is boring for action fans and too dull for more discerning viewers. Overall impression: 45%. (29.01.2021)

A commendable attempt at a social genre film with a few ideas and shots that no production should be ashamed of (the execution, the opening by-the-way crash outside the bank, a few slick fight moves, the unmasking of the main bad guy). But at the same time, while it works with the right action clichés, mainly highlighted by the masked vigilante hero or the introduction of the protagonist's mighty fight kick, which he eventually uses to take out the biggest badguy, it doesn't want to fall into complete caricature and tries to be socially relevant. And it fails (the film has trouble finding the right moment for the hero to take action, and the first half is a bunch of awful flip flopping) rather than succeeds (the villain's brief monologue about how he at least channels his money and activities into the community and his surroundings, as opposed to the rich hero spending his life in the isolation of his ivory tower). The proverbial balance is then tipped by poorly edited battles in the dark and an unappealing protagonist reminiscent of a combination of a young Vin Diesel and Martin Veselovský who can’t so much as swallow a noodle. (22.05.2018)

I admit that I was attracted to the film mainly because of the lead actor. Dar Salim caught my eye in the Dicte series; he looks like Vin Diesel, but he is originally from Iraq. The real-life foundations of the story draw the viewer into the plot during the slower start, and then it's a wild ride from there. The pace intensifies, the atmosphere in the immigrant underworld is also decent, and the main hero doesn't exactly catch his breath on his journey for justice. After the scene in the intentionally crashed car, when suddenly it's not certain if he physically has what it takes to finish what he started, the plot escalates until the completely, once again, quite realistic end. Simply put, this action drama Danish-style about seeking revenge for the killing of a younger brother is truly worth watching. (06.03.2020)