Mike McCahill 

Northwest review – anaemic Scandi-noir crime caper

The Scandinavian crime wave continues in a supposedly naturalistic makeover that cannot resist some designer porn , writes Peter Bradshaw
  
  

Northwest, film still
Scrappy posturing … Northwest Photograph: pr

The latest item carried over on the Scandi crime wave forsakes chunky-knit sweaters for a notional harder edge, offering a naturalistic study of a teenage cat burglar caught between rival factions on the Copenhagen periphery. Much of Michael Noer's film feels anaemic: the switchback plotting that sees bullet-headed antihero Casper (Gustav Dyekjaer Giese) become a figure of empathy was put over with greater force and visual flair by Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher films. Some site-specific design porn persists – notably in Casper's quest for a PH Artichoke lamp – but it chiefly resembles that scrappy posturing by which our own film industry habitually bids for street cred. 

 

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