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| Star Dar Salim's face, enshrouded in darkness and dark garbs and some few fiery sparks make up this poster for Fenar Ahmad's Underverden II |
Zaid is in prison for the killings he carried out as revenge for his brother's gangland killing years ago, when he gets contacted by a desperate intelligence officer, who wants him to go undercover to clear out the new gangster leaders in Copenhagen.
Underverden II is written by Behrouz Bigdeli (Snooze (2008, short)) and co-writer/director Fenar Ahmad (Flow/Ækte Vare (2014)). It is the sequel to Ahmad's Darkland/Underverden (2017). The original Danish title translates to 'underworld II'.
The high action ambitions are properly established from the get-go, as a young man is executed outside the capital city's main court building. Birgitte Hjort Sørensen (Vinyl (2016, TV-series)) works well as the responsible intelligence officer, who soon seeks an alternative way to get the hoods through Zaid. His motivation is to sooner emerge to regained freedom and reconnect with his son.
The plot works fairly well as an easy-to-follow action-thriller about a man taking on gang members, not unlike Charles Bronson's classic Death Wish formula. There's plenty of action and menace, but several of the action scenes come off as less than believable. Zaid has no problems temporarily kidnapping a gang leader from a heavily guarded gang headquarter and escaping the situation in the high-rise in one such dubious instance. Director Ahmad's abilities as an action salesman come up short. Machine gun salvos are liberally sprinkled over many scenes, although some audiences will also wince at this, which luckily isn't the norm in any Danish streets and thus feels fairly unrealistic
The labored script keeps up the first film's universe dichotomy of Zaid's resourceful family (now a pregnant ex with the soccer-playing son and a constantly blameful, nagging attitude towards Zaid) against the harsh ghetto life of ruthless crime for other kids and ethnic minority adults that Zaid has to right. It is also conspicuous how Zaid is practically the only character in the film that's been allowed to show feelings in Underverden II: SPOILER The tough gangster leader shows no emotions when his brother is killed (on Zaid's 'watch'), nor does Zaid's son show emotions after their car gets riddled with bullets. - Both instances may feel involuntarily comic for those who stop to think. The gangster boss doesn't become more frightening for not having emotions, but he does get less credible and the film loses more credibility value. Dar Salim (Springfloden (2016-18)) carries the film well mostly SPOILER but fails to get across credibly in a late scene, where he begs for his life.
New-comer Ahmad Ayman is good as the teenage gangster that Zaid becomes a father figure for, and whom Zaid wants to leave that arena, and their dynamic and scenes are among the film's best. Though far less successful than the first film in terms of quality, there is a high chance we are going to see #3 in a few years. Hopefully with a fresh spin.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: Unknown (projected 4.42 mil. $)
Box office: 2.45 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say (currently ranks a huge flop)
[Underverden II was released 13 April (Denmark) and runs 110 minutes. Shooting took place in Denmark, including in Copenhagen. Its budget has not been announced yet, but it is likely at least 30 mil. DKK, approximately 4.42 mil. $. The film was been #1 in Danish cinemas its first 2 weekends and sold 138k tickets to date, coming to approximately 2.45 mil. $ so far. It is so far not set to be released in other markets. Ahmad does not have his next film announced yet. Salim returned in The Covenant (2023). 257 IMDb users have given Underverden II a 7.1/10 average rating.]
What do you think of Underverden II?
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