Mark Reviews Movies: POWDER KEG

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 2, 2021

A dramatization of a pair of terror attacks in Copenhagen in 2015, Powder Keg is also and generally about a quartet of men—all of them tired, fed up, and on the brink of some kind of major change. That one of these men murdered two people and wounded five others makes the connection discomforting and a bit sinister, and it's clear that the filmmakers have little idea what to do with the central idea they've generated.

Co-screenwriters Lars Kristian Andersen and Ole Christian Madsen (the latter of whom also directed) go to great lengths to make sure we understand the similarities between these four characters. One is a cop, a leader of a local SWAT team, who was injured in the line of duty and now finds his career in jeopardy. Another is a documentary filmmaker, who desperately wants to tell stories that interest him but whose ambitions are being stifled by a TV news network. A third man has a degree in political science, but at the age of 37, he is unemployed, save for some work as a security guard, and lives at home with his parents.

All of these men want something they cannot have, and each one begins to find escape or purpose in something else. Rico (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), the cop, is divorced and going through a legal battle over visitation rights, and while he sits alone in physical and emotional pain, he finds some hope in chats with a woman by way of a dating app on his phone.

In between editing his current project and having arguments with television producers, Finn (Lars Brygmann), the documentarian, becomes more or less obsessed with the recent attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo—motivated by the paper's publication of a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad and resulting in the murders of 12 people. His fixation eventually becomes a rallying cry for Finn, who starts to preach to his friends and colleagues about the necessity of free speech.

As for Dan (Adam Buschard), he's giving his attempts to start a career another go. With every rejection, though, he's becoming more and more frustrated.

Obviously, we have to talk about the fourth man in this equation of disillusionment and disappointment. He's Omar (Albert Arthur Amiryan), and even describing the worries, concerns, and reactions of the other three puts the filmmakers' comparison with this man into uncomfortable territory. Omar is released from prison on parole, after serving time for stabbing a man, whom he mistakenly took as a different man who previously had attacked him. Omar has a long criminal record of thefts and other acts of violence, and while in prison, a fellow inmate has introduced him to ISIS propaganda videos online.

After leaving prison, Omar finds himself with little chance of finding a job or a place to live, since he's staying with an unseen mother who is disappointed with her son's criminal activity. The propaganda gives Omar something—the dream of an Islamic caliphate of which he would be a part and a sense of purpose in fulfilling the orders of the ISIS leader who has promised that political change.

He starts looking for a target: a Swedish artist who has also disrespectfully portrayed Muhammad and is currently living in Denmark. From there, he begins to form a plan, while obtaining and practicing with various firearms.

Most of the movie follows these four men in the days leading up to the attacks, which occurred on February 14 and 15 of that year. The screenplay focuses on the central characters' troubles, and Madsen's intercutting between these men and use of similar shots to frame them (close-ups, of course, but also a running motif of the men isolated in empty spaces) only emphasize the desire to connect them.

Rico and Dan feel like outsiders within this story. The former, whom we know to be the man to put an end to the attacks from a prologue, tries to hide his physical agony, while eventually turning that text-based relationship with the woman from the app into a sexual one, which he wants to be more. The latter guards a synagogue and answers disappointing phone calls from job applications, but there's little sense of him beyond this.

Most of the movie is focused on something of an absentee ideological debate between Finn, whose politics of championing free speech over the potential of offending people become more pronounced, and Omar, whose past and present feelings of not being a part of anything lead him down the path toward violence. Finn's scenes become lectures of sorts, and if there's anything to gain from understanding what leads Omar to murder, the filmmakers certainly don't provide it.

As superficially intriguing as the linking of these four men's problems and emotional states may be, none of it ultimately matters as soon as Powder Keg starts to re-create the attacks. Rico is the one to announce some kind of theme, wondering if it's possible to maintain one's humanity in the face of such discontentment and eventual horror. Since the human side of this story is so shallow, it's a question the movie is ill-prepared to confront.

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