Executive Protection (2001)

Very disappointing...

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

I could go on for hours about all the things that stink about this movie, but just to be brief: - countless plot holes and illogical actions (e.g. the "professional bodyguards" leaves the country home of their client virtually unattended with THE GATES OPEN for the bad guys to simply drive through...) - The acting. Oh My God. Over-acting on some parts, while Eklund (as usual) looks like a tired Labrador and switches back and forth between his two only expressions: confused and confusedly smiling. - The dialogue. Jeez. How many clichés can you stuff into one script?I don't know why, but for some reason mediocre or downright awful action movies receive high grades if they're in Swedish, while no one would bother if they had been made in the USA. The Swedish film industry seems obsessed with making bad versions of American B-films. The horror. The horror.

Usually Swedish action movies are worse than an American C-class action. In movies like the two latest Hamilton movies (Vendetta and Hamilton) the action mainly consists of car explosions and gunfights that even the worst of American action would match.Livvakterna does not fall into this trap, to my delight there isn't one single car explosion. Sure, there are some gunfight but to me they feel real, the characters feels real, the script feels real... basically, it's a very good movie.

After having been almost physically persuaded to see this movie (I don´t see Swedish movies anymore, they usually put my teeth on edge), I was extremely surprised by "Livvakterna". This and it´s predecessor "Noll Tolerans"(made by the same people, has the same main character) are most probably the only Swedish action thrillers to actually deserve that denomination.An introvert, hard boiled, cop goes to the funeral of his friend´s father, and gets involved in a yarn of extortion, blackmail and murder. The action scenes are realistic, nothing fancy, the characters believable, and most of all, the cinematography is excellent. A car chase through a Swedish forest will go down in history as a modern classic, and the director made good use of cut and sound to highten the suspence. And believe me, towards the end I found myself biting my fingernails to the quick!All in all, the best in its genre to come out of Sweden in a long time, and I hope that this movie sets a standard!

Part of writing a manuscript is about creating realistic dialogue. In Livvakterna this is handled with a new, daring exercise: Let the star meet all questions with silence. Somehow though, you could consider it realistic. I mean, after all the star is a psycho cop who don't attend former girlfriends funerals, who loves police work more than family life, who quits police work by just sending a mail and have more guts fighting lawyers than criminals. He loses himself in a bodyguards vs bodyguards drama and move into the woods. There will not be another sequel to Noll Tolerans-Livvakterna. Therefore I'm thankful and gave it an 8.