Krishna
This is a Danish movie originally and it has a good story, with – as seems to be common in recent times – a twist that makes you gasp near the end.
The whole story has a European feel as you’d expect from a Danish film. The story, though, is universal, and holds your interest throughout. The whole story plays out in the course of a single day and with the central character just sitting in an emergency call centre. This is very neat.
The story revolves around a policeman Asger Holm. He is a policeman who is usually on a beat but he seems to have shown a questionable behaviour in an incident. They have instituted an inquiry, which is due the day after when the movie begins. During the course of the movie, we learn that Asger was indeed guilty but he has coached his beat partner Rashid (yes, Rashid) to lie for him in the inquiry for him. This is all lightly mentioned in the course of the movie through phone calls.
He hates the call duty but today seems to be the last day of his call duty and if, as expected, he is exonerated in the inquiry tomorrow, he can go back to active duty from the day after. He is very much looking forward to going back. The first couple of calls are routine and he even has fun on the side with a person who called in to say that he was robbed by a hooker he had picked up for sex. He arranges to send the police to the address, though.
He is surprised by a call on her personal cell phone which rattles him when he finds out that it is a journalist, asking him how he thinks that the inquiry will go. Not only does the journalist have the details of the inquiry, but also has found his personal cell number! Disconcerted, he almost misses the next call – but not quite. He picks up the call, which would turn out to obsess him for the better part of the day.
That call is from a lady called Iben. She pretends that she is talking to her child, who is alone at home. She drops enough hints for him to realize that she is under duress and is crying for help in an indirect way. He encourages her to pretend that this is his child she is talking to (whoever is with her cannot hear his part of the conversation) and asks her a series of yes or no questions, interspersed with advice for her to ask if the child has eaten and whether she is scared etc, to throw off suspicions. He realizes that Iben is in a car, taken against her will by a man who may be armed (with a knife). She thinks it is a white van and it is going in a particular highway. He calls dispatch in another line and asks them to track a white van on that road (and is unable to give the license number).
The call gets abruptly terminated and there is no answer when Asger calls back. Meanwhile the police find a white van (with difficulty as it is raining heavily) and force it to stop. It turns out to be a false alarm.
He tracks Iben through the number of the phone from which he received the call and finds the home address and phone number. The phone is answered by Mathilde who is six year old. She is home alone with her baby brother Oliver. Her father Michael, who was estranged from her mother came home earlier that day in a very agitated state and shouted at her mother. Then they went into the bedroom and Mathilde could hear her father shouting at Oliver. He left with the mother, after telling Mathilde to stay at home and be quite, and not to wake Oliver. Mathilde is hysterical and worried about her mother. Asger calms her and tells her that he is going to send the police over to her house and asks her to stay with her baby brother until they do. He assures her that she will not be in trouble if she ‘disturbed her baby brother’ against the wishes of the father. He gives Mathilde also his personal phone number and asks her to call him if she needs to.
He investigates Michael and finds that he has had a history of violent behaviour including domestic abuse. He also finds Michael’s address and the fact that he drives a white van. He asks the dispatch to send police to the children’s house and another to Michael’s house to break and enter but the dispatch rejects his latter request as it is not legal without a warrant.
In desperation, he calls Michael’s phone and tells him that he is the police and received information that his kids are home alone and he wants Michael to go over there. A clearly distracted Michael refuses to do so and when confronted with the fact that the police know he is kidnapping his wife and that the police have been dispatched, he abruptly cuts the call.
What happens next is amazing and I do not want to spoil the ending. It is a well made movie, and even in its subtitled version, it just grips you and keeps you on the edge of the seat all the way through until its explosive end.
A total entertainer. 9/10
– – Krishna (January 2020)