Darkland

Zaid is a heart surgeon in Copenhagen. He lives in an expensive flat, has a pregnant girlfriend and has not seen his family for a long time. One night his brother comes to the door asking for money; he is in trouble. Zaid refuses. Soon after, his brother is killed. The police do not take the investigation forward; the file is closed as a settling of scores between gangs. Zaid goes to the neighbourhood where his brother lived and starts finding out who did what. Then he learns to fight and goes out at night. Fenar Ahmad directs. Dar Salim plays Zaid. It is a Danish production. What the film builds is genre; the narrative uses the shape of revenge and the vigilante directly. Its ground is the migrant neighbourhoods and class division in Denmark; the film takes that not as background but as its direct subject. Zaid's position is at the centre; the man had moved away from where he came from and on returning is treated as a stranger. It did well at the Danish box office and a sequel was made. The fights are crude and short; the narrative does not present its hero as skilled. Its limit is the script; the transformation comes quickly and some characters are one dimensional. Who it is for: viewers who like Scandinavian crime films and revenge narratives. Who it is not for: the violence is explicit, the plot familiar, and the ending lands where expected.