Escape

PLOT:
It’s been 10 years since the Black Plague tore through the lands of Norway leaving most of its people dead. As a family travels to find a safer place to live, they are ambushed by Dagmar (played by Ingrid Boiso Berdal) and her gang killing all but 19 year old Signe (played by Isabel Christine Andreasen). Taking the girl to their camp, Dagmar plans to make Signe become her own daughter even if that means she has to hurt her in the process.

ACTING:
Well, considering that there’s not really much dialog in this movie and when there is it’s dubbed over, I would say the acting seemed to be ok. With it being a dubbed movie I can’t say that they said their lines in a believable manner or if they where saying their lines like a robot. It seemed like they could have been saying their lines like reading from a paper bag but as far as acting goes they do put on a good performance. The main character of the girl Signe is made to be this scared young girl who is only trying to survive the loss of her family and the antagonist Dagmar is truly a mean woman who just don’t care about how her actions affect others.

ORIGINALITY:
Alright, so the movie is not the most original of plots but it’s one that will never go out of style. It’s a simple plot, a girl has her family killed in front of her by a gang and then they take her with plans to harm her. She of course gets away but the gang chases after her now wanting to kill her for getting away. Her only hope is to turn the tables on the gang and attack them before they can kill her. See, not original, no matter what the language or the time frame it’s been place in but it’s one that when done right it can be enjoyable.

TONE:
This is a dark movie and somewhat depressing with death all through it. I won’t give away what plot points that make it dark but what does happen is far from being happy. Along with the characters stories being dark, there’s also the back story of the Black Plague and how it still affects the people after 10 years.

STORY/PROGRESSION:
So far we have a movie that’s dark, it’s not original when it comes to a plot, and it’s a Norwegian movie dubbed into English with original language being Swedish. What we also have is a movie that is very quick when it comes to the progression of introducing the main character, the antagonist, and then getting to the meat of the story with the chase. Not much happens though, which is odd considering that the movie does push along at a solid speed. Normally I would have been bored with such a movie where there’s not much going on and the story is not that developed when it comes to writing, but I wasn’t. I would have liked to have had more to the story, even though we are given the history of Dagmar, it’s very short and it don’t fully explain why the village first suspected what they did. Also, I was made to not like Dagmar from the first moment she enters the story but then when I find out about her past I got the feeling that I was supposed to feel sorry for her. I didn’t though because the woman was just one big bag of meanness with a crossbow. Still, it does have enough action going on to keep it interesting and there’s enough reason to believe that anything could happen, which goes a long way to fill in that underdeveloped plot.

BLU RAY:
Well, I must say that I’m quite impressed with the look of this movie. I might have had to listen to some dull dubbed over voices and the story is a little lacking when it comes to plot twists but it does have a major plus, the way it looks. This Blu Ray has a beautiful picture quality and looked really sharp on my screen. The colors pop even when they are being used to make the day look cold and blue, they are very crisp and clear. I could see a lot of the fine detail like all the dirt that was on the actors as well as how bright blue Dagmar’s eyes are. Though I couldn’t find out for sure but the way this movie looks with the sharp and clear picture quality is that it was probably shot on digital cameras. It’s a good looking movie with no noise in the blacks and it has what I really love about Blu Rays, delete scenes and bloopers. Which I got to say, watching bloopers in Swedish just made it funnier.