R/R: Hit First, Hit Hardest (2010) or, Prison Ain't Nice

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2 Film Excess nominations:
  
Best Lead Actor: Pilou Asbæk (lost to Stephen Dorff for Somewhere)
Best Director: Tobias Lindholm, Michael Noer (lost to Sofia Coppola for Somewhere)

 

+ Best Prison Movie of the Year

 

The simple French poster for Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer's R

 

Rune arrives to Horsens State Prison, where he gets humiliated and establishes himself as a drug-smuggler. SPOILER But he winds up in a jam and gets murdered as a result, which provokes great consequences for his co-conspirator Rashid.

 

R is the kind of feature debut that creates great respect; in this case to its great, Danish writer-director duo Tobias Lindholm (A War/Krigen (2015)) and Michael Noer (Key House Mirror/Nøgle Hus Spejl (2015)), who give an unexpected, tight and goosebumps-inflicting, crime-deterring prison film. R will inevitable foster reflection and debate about the prison as an institution and a (dubious) means of corrections.

Pilou Asbæk (Ben-Hur (2016)) is impressive as Rune/R. The film investigates the brutality and logic of violence in a highly impressive raw, docu-style manner.

 

Related posts:

 

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Tobias Lindholm: 2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

A War/Krigen (2015) - The Dane goes to war in Lindholm's great third feature

A Hijacking/Kapringen (2012) - Realistic piracy negotiation drama-thriller, minimalist-Scandinavian style
The Hunt/Jagten (2012) - Vinterberg's strongest film since 1998 is a reversed Celebration (writer)

Michael Noer: Northwest/Nordvest (2013) - Strong performances make Noer's underwritten crime thriller work (co-writer-director) 

 

The filmmakers talk about the film here

Cost: 4.755 mil. DKK, equal to approximately 0.72 mil. $

Box office: Unknown

= Unknown (but likely a big flop)

[R premiered in sometime in January (International Film Festival Rotterdam) and runs 96 minutes. It was shot on location in Horsens State Prison. The film played at 15 film festivals around the world, winning a number of awards. 32,180 paid admission to see it in its native Denmark, - not an impressive number. Without foreign numbers, a definite theatrical status cannot be exacted, but if it more than doubled its gross outside of its native Denmark, it would still be a big flop. R won the Robert Award (Danish Oscar) for Best Danish Film of the Year as well as Bodil Awards (Danish critics' awards) for Best Film and Best Actor (Asbæk). R has a 7.2 IMDb average as rated by 3,406 users.]

What do you think of R?