In A Better World Review

Despite winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, this is a rather melodramatic study of misplaced might that centres on the strained father-son relationships of divorced Swedish missionary doctor Mikael Persbrandt and teenager Markus Rygaard and his classmate William Jøhnk Nielsen and his newly widowed father, Ulrich Thomsen. In comparing the brutality of an African warlord with the recklessness of a schoolboy, Susanne Bier risks trivialising her discussion of pacifism, loyalty, bullying and retribution. Moreover, by focusing on the notion of violence begetting violence, she neglects such other themes as male responses to bereavement, class and racial antagonisms and the still patronising attitude of civilised societies to the developing world. Often fascinating, but far-fetched.