Butler's Cinema Scene

“DELIVER US FROM EVIL”   (Available June 28)

This gritty Scandinavian thriller clearly was inspired by Sam Peckinpah’s seminal “Straw Dogs” (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is the subject of an American  remake set for September release).

It begins as a sort of dysfunctional family drama. Johannes (Lasse Rimmer) is a well-to-do lawyer who has returned to his small hometown in Jutland’s lowlands. He’s got a sexy wife, a couple of kids and lots of big-city ideas that the brutish locals find amusing and somewhat irritating.

Among these primitives is Johannes’ ne’er-do-well brother Lars (Jens Andersen), an over-the-road trucker who, while fumbling with a cell phone, drives over a local woman. Hiding her body near the highway, Lars proceeds to town where a summer festival is in progress.

There he hatches a plan to lay the hit-and-run death on  a hulking, not very bright  Bosnian refugee (Bojan Navojec) who  has been working as a day laborer at Johannes’ big home in the country.

The festival turns into a drunken brawl, the dead woman is discovered and before you can say “mob justice” a couple dozen boozed-up yahoos have surrounded Johannes’ house to demand that he turn over the suspect for summary execution.

Despite his terrified wife’s pleas to give the mob members what they want, Johannes goes all Rambo. Apparently he sees himself as Davy Crockett at the Alamo and gets to work maiming or killing any  alcohol-addled receding chin who makes the mistake of trying to break in.

Ole Bornedal’s film is one of those stomach churners where despite the seemingly bucolic setting you can sense that terrible things are going to happen –and, boy, do they.

‘Deliver Us…” is not for the faint of heart. But once you start watching and the screws start tightening, it’s awfully hard to look away.

| ROBERT W. BUTLER