911 dispatchers have an incredibly intense job: fielding calls from scared and hurt people needing emergency services. They have to keep their calm, be aware of their surroundings, and work extremely quickly. Most, if not all, take their job very seriously. Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergen) does not. He's been demoted from his usual police work, and has a casualness and victim-blaming mentality to get him through his shifts.
That is until he receives a panicked call from a woman who's been abducted. Though he's not able to send help right away, he uses both his wits and the resources at the police station to try to get her back safely. While it sounds similar to Brad Anderson's The Call, it will be noticeably chillier than that low-budget Halle Berry thriller. But that's to be expected in Scandinavian cinema.
Winner of the Audience Award for World Cinema at this year's Sundance Film Festival, this Danish nail-biter will have a limited release in the U.S. beginning Friday, October 19.
About Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about.
I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague.
Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work.
In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo.
I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.
