Bermuda International Film Festival 2009

Copenhagen, 1944: Denmark is occupied by the Nazis. Resistance fighters Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and Citron (Mads Mikkelsen) - so named because of the former's distinctive red hair and the latter's fondness for a particular brand of French car - are members of the Holger Danske group, specialising in acts of sabotage and liquidating Danish informers. But Flame, the younger of the two, wants to take direct action against the Germans, while Citron, a middle-aged man whose family is torn apart by his activities, gets drawn ever deeper into the tangled politics of the resistance movement. An action thriller and period piece with a hefty dose of noir, Ole Christian Madsen’s fact-based film was a massive hit in Denmark and one of the best war films of recent years. As the sabotage and double-crossing mounts, Lindhardt and Mikkelsen give sterling performances, and Madsen wields great skill to combine action scenes with the complex moral debate about wartime resistance, where heroic acts inevitably provoke reprisals against innocent civilians.