Throughout the movie, I was reminded constantly of two different things. First, I think the style of the movie was very evocative of the Dick Wolf series of TV shows on NBC. The style was very similar to the Chicago suite of shows with the shaky handheld cameras with the uncomfortable zooms. It even cycles through the police and the doctors and the courtroom. It was like watching a 2.5 hour crossover event. It's a little too long. In a procedural TV show, we get character development over time, but the characters can only be so far developed in a movie trying to follow so many different characters little by little while keeping to procedure. Except the movie lacks any of the interest or excitement of an investigation, because the terrorist gives himself up.
The other movie I was reminded of was the German movie In the Fade, another movie about far-right European nationalist terrorism. In the Fade was grittier and Diane Kruger plays an engrossing, fully developed, vengeful character. Paul Greengrass takes a different approach on the same theme. His message, told primarily through Viljar, is one of resilience in the face of the kind of nationalism that has sprouted all over the world. Though taking place in 2011, this is an unmistakable primary source film on our own times. Maybe he's trying to say that the US is not alone, nor the first place nationalism has reared its ugly head. Maybe he's saying we should have seen it coming.
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