Flame & Citron

Drew's Thoughts:
Ole Christian Madsen's Flame & Citron is the most expensive Danish film ever made at 10 million dollars (about 4 million more than The Wrestler cost) and tells the story of the title characters, controversial WW2 figures famous in Denmark. The Flame, named for his red hair not gayness, and Citron nicknamed, even more hilariously, because he worked for Citron vodka, are members of the Danish resistance who basically go around murdering Danish Nazi-sympathizers and informers. I had never heard of Flame and Citron before so it was interesting getting some idea of the political climate in Denmark during World War 2 through those two figures.
Stylistically, the film is what Public Enemies should have been, a slick, violent noir-inspired period piece. The film is pretty strong across the technical categories; editing, art direction, costumes, cinematography.
The other thing I liked about the movie is even though it's a WW2 espionage story Madsen didn't make the film like a WW2 espionage film. He seemed to take more inspiration from gangster movies, which is an inspired choice. The film brings up the question of how far does being on the "good side" go to exonerate someone from repeatedly committing violent, murderous acts? And it's much better than the similarly-themed, dumb piece of crap Inglourious Basterds.
I think Flame & Citron is certainly a worthy contender for a Foreign Film nom at the Dolphins next year, probably in some tech categories too.

Colleen's Thoughts:
I enjoyed this film much more than I had expected to. (Although to be fair, I really had no idea what to expect from Denmark’s most expensive film which is about WWII). As Drew has already discussed, this film centers on the characters Flame and Citron who are Denmark’s WWII heroes. (Flame is one bad-ass redhead which doesn’t hurt the film in this dolphineer’s eyes). Citron and Flame were the central and most uncorrupt members of the Danish resistance. This was a good film for someone like me because it showed two people fighting against fascism and injustice but also showed the complications of this task. Killing humans, Nazi or not, is still killing humans and the film did an excellent job of trying to shed light on this issue without unduly making the Nazis seem like good guys. An example of this is a moment in the film where Flame recalls how he once hesitated while shooting a Nazi. He says that was before he realized Nazis weren’t human. Immediately after this, Flame has trouble killing a target—showing he isn’t able to fully buy his line that Nazis shouldn’t be seen as people. I think this movie is a wonderful examination of the idea of heroes. It really probes issues that other character studies of heroic figures tend to avoid. For example, are Flame and Citron justified in committing murder? How do they know they are killing people they should be? Who can you trust even within the resistance? Beyond exploring interesting questions, Flame and Citron is just good story telling and film making. The acting is superb as well. If it wasn’t such a competitive year Thure Lindhart and Mads Mikkelsen would probably be getting some love at the Colleen’s. Flame and Citron was enjoyable start to finish.