Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation/Hamilton: I Nationens Intresse (2012) - Flawed spy hogwash

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Mikael Persbrandt looks intensely at us in a stately suit on the poster for Katrine Windfeld's Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation

Hamilton, a deadly spy-weapon of the Swedish state, survives a major arm's deal gone haywire in Uzbekistan and must soon thereafter rescue a Swedish weapon's technician in Africa.

Hamilton is a technically well-oiled adaptation of Swede Jan Guillou's (Coq Rouge - The Story of a Swedish Spy/Coq Rouge (1986)) same-titled 1988 novel, the third of his 13 novels of spy Hamilton. Stefan Thunberg (False Trail/Jägerne 2 (2011)) adapted the novel and Dane Kathrine Windfeld (The Escape/Flugten (2009)), who passed away tragically young earlier this year, directed the film.
The visuals and especially the fight scenes are molded after the Bourne movies (2002; '04; '07; '12), and Hamilton's stunt coordinator Cedric Proust (In the Valley of Elah (2007)) actually worked on the stunts of The Bourne Ultimatum (2007).
But the angle taken on the novel is fundamentally flawed here: Hamilton should have been revived ('he' has been adapted before as Harold Zwart's Commander Hamilton (1998) and the TV-miniseries Hamilton (2001)) as a period film, set in the time it was written for, or left alone. - The world has changed a lot since the books.
The fact SPOILER that Hamilton to a large degree takes place in Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and so on, but that the villains are all sinister, cynical Americans are the typically Swedish, politically correct choice. Hamilton is a film that steals American formalism and style in order to make an anti-American, nationalistically Swedish serving of genderless nonsense. A disappointing film.

Related posts:

2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Watch the trailer with English subtitles here

Cost: Estimated 45 mil. SEK. ~ 5.5 mil. $
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty
[A lot of the film was shot in Jordan, where it was also screened at the Swedish diplomatic mission. Hamilton became the #1 Swedish movie in Sweden of the year with 512k admissions. - Good but not spectacular: This would only generate around 8 mil. SEK, and so the film can surely be counted as a flop of some kind. 2012 was the biggest cinema-year in Sweden in 25 years in terms of admissions, (18.4 mil. ~ 281 mil. $), but the support for Swedish films shown by the audiences are still way under for instance the neighboring Danish audiences' enthusiasm for Danish films. Hamilton was the only Swedish movie in the top 10, at #6. It was sold to "more than ten foreign markets." The film is the first of a proposed trilogy with Agent Hamilton: But Not If It Concerns Your Daughter/Hamilton: Men Inte Om Det Gäller Din Dotter (2012) being the second film. The third is still not announced and may well never happen. Hamilton doesn't have a Rotten Tomatoes score, but it does have a 6.3 user's average, based on 6.201 clicks on IMDb.]

What do you think of Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation?
If you've seen the sequel, how does it rate in comparison?

Brothers/Brødre (2004) or, A Woman Came Between Them

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+ Worst Poster of the Year

It doesn't take a college degree to analyze plot information out of the poster for Susanne Bier's Brothers here

QUICK REVIEW:

A Danish officer is sent to Afghanistan, where he crashes down in a helicopter and is reported dead. At home, his violently convicted brother begins to bone the widow. But then the brother returns home...
Brødre is nowhere near the masterpiece that it was hailed as by much of the Danish press in '04. It is a contemporary melodrama that wallows in the heavy, fatal decisions of its main characters, but leaves you with no real intellectual baggage. The thing in Brødre that comes nearest to being that, - an idea that sticks after the film has ended, - is its protagonist's illustration that a murder inevitably destroys a person, and that is, especially in the context of war that Brødre navigates in, a rewrite of the truth. You can almost sense the womanly whimper through Brødre that all soldier veterans who have seen combat must subsequently become mentally handicapped, but the fact is that they do not. Man can, to a great extent, kill.
The (melo)drama of Brødre, however, works. Especially due to Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration/Festen (1998)) as the returning, scarred brother, who plays phenomenally. But also the two girls that play his daughters, Sara Juel Werner (We Shall Overcome/Drømmen (2006)) and Rebecca Løgstrup (The Eagle/Ørnen (2006)) are great. The film has some humor, but also a terribly misplaced Niels Olsen (Danish comedic actor) in one part.
Aesthetically, Brødre is post-Dogme in the worst sense of the words; like a fall behind turd of the mostly 90s movement that thinks that extreme close-ups, hand-held and shaking camera are the highest form of cinematic expression.
Brødre was remade in America in 2009 by Jim Sheridan with the same title and stars Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire.
This original version is directed by Susanne Bier, who won the Best Foreign Film Oscar a few years back for her In a Better World /Hævnen (2010), and is now finalizing her Serena with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. She is then bound for another Danish drama. Her best film is the drug-related drama about surviving terrible loss, Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) with Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro.

Related post:

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch the trailer for Brødre with English subtitles here

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of Brødre?
And of Bier and her movies?