CITRON (MADS MIKKELSEN) AND FLAME (THURE LINDHARDT) AND THEIR CAR

Saga of tandem heroes

It’s not a good idea to compare Flame and Citron with Melville’s Army of Shadows. It’s about another time and place and was made much later -- for much more money. It’s a very good and engrossing film even without the stylistic trademark noir grimness of the French filmmaker. Both films are about World War II resistance fighters and both of them do focus on “the murky moral complexities of wartime” (this new Danish film’s blurb). The similarity ends there. As the title indicates, this new film concerns a team, an inseparable duo. Flame and Citron (Flammen & Citronen) were the code names of a couple of Danes whose resistance to the Nazi occupation consisted of a series of assassinations. hey take orders from above n and have a dozen or so associates, but they work mostly on their own. Flame is a young redhead whose father, we learn later, owns a resort hotel. He’s the killer and Citron, a swarthy man who seems perpetually in a sweat. The makeup people must have covered his face with glycerin every day of the shoot. He wears big glasses and a floppy black fedora. After a while he stops just being the driver and gradually begins to join in the killing with steadily growing fearlessness and enthusiasm.

Things get very complicated after a while when Flame becomes involved with a woman. Her allegiances are uncertain. She’s not the only one. Flame and Citron never waver. The only trouble is, do they know what they’re doing? Are they killing the right people? Could they be making things worse? Nonetheless, when the field of action is shifting these two bitter, intrepid men are looked on by the resistance as assets because they’re famous heroes. Eventually they become too hot to handle but there’s no escape from the tangled web they’ve woven. This is an intense and suspenseful piece of work with two satisfying climaxes, one for each of the men who in flight have finally been separated.

Since they are always onscreen the two actors who play the leads are of enormous importance to the success of this film. Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Citron, is an actor famous in Denmark familiar to us as Le Chiffre in the 2006 Casino Royale. He has a steely hardness about him, yet his mouth is like a wound and his eyes are pools of suffering. These qualities are essential in the brief but significant scenes when Citron is reunited with his wife and child,. Citron is always a little in the background. Thure Lindhardt, who plays Flame, is a sallow younger man (his character is 23) whose blank stares hides an inexplicable fury. The union of the two is mysterious and fascinating. This is an unusual subject for a movie and stays with you when the various melees may have faded, though the tandem finales, powerfully staged, are likely to linger.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.