Author's judgement:
The story of the Stockholm Credit Bank robbery that actually took place in 1973: this is the plot of the film of the week, Robbery in Stockholmdirected by newcomer Robert Budreau with two high-level protagonists: Noomi Rapace and Ethan Hawke. Let's say right away that it is a very high quality film that amply deserves the four stars: with attention to the script, the dialogues, the narrative times, the lights, the details, the choice of characters as you rarely see. Everything fits perfectly and the two main actors soar above any average.
The story actually took place in the Swedish capital when Jan-Erik Olsson, the true protagonist of the story, carries out a robbery with the aim of obtaining the release of one of his accomplices who is already detained. During the events that followed, inside the bank besieged by the police, a sort of complicity develops between the man and one of the women taken hostage which, subsequently, will be defined as "Stockholm syndrome". It is a particular psychological state, a behavior that sees the victim on the side of her executioner, a kind of psychological subjection that sees her totally dominated by the situation that has arisen in that particular circumstance. It happened that during the six long days in which the robbery took place between criminals and victims, an anomalous sense of solidarity and closeness developed that greatly impressed public opinion, especially in that country where similar events were completely unusual.
The government and the police had no intention of giving in to the robbers' blackmail. We won't reveal the ending which belongs to the news but the film, for those who don't remember the event or have never heard of the subject, leaves everything pending until the very end. Robbery in Stockholm points everything to the heart of the problem, to the story and to the tension that develops between the two main protagonists and manages well to give the sensation of what can happen in the mind of a person when he finds himself at certain moments, deprived of his freedom and held hostage of his jailer.
An attention arises and grows between Kai and Bianca that could go beyond the time in which the event takes place: it seems like the unfolding of a design already present in their story, in their life story. The two actors play almost perfectly and manage to restore the soul of the characters in an excellent way. Noomi Rapace, moreover, is the unforgettable protagonist of the Trilogy by the Swedish Stieg Larsoon who has achieved significant international success with his films. It seems clear that the film school of the Scandinavian country is rich and promising.
The genre of film, especially in the first part, brings us back to that rich line of films on bank robberies: it immediately comes to mind That dog day afternoon, Sidney Lumet's masterpiece also inspired by a real robbery that took place in New York just a year before the one in Stockholm. In that film, a superlative Al Pacino together with the late John Cazale, a similar story is told in many respects where, in that case, the "public" who from outside the bank watched live the robbery in progress openly and directly sided with the part of the robbers.
It would be interesting to investigate why this kind of film, and in particular those where that kind of relationship between robbers and hostages is established, still enjoys great attention from the public: see the case of the success of The paper house produced and distributed by neflix, which will be seen again on the screens for next July. For sociologists and psychologists there is much to investigate. As far as we are concerned, we limit ourselves to writing that Robbery in Stockholm is the best cinema offers in this quarter of a season.
