Hjärta av sten (2000)

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

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

A Swedish journalist recently wrote that this film is becoming a cult classic. The casting choices are brilliant for this type of film. Allan Svensson is known to play characters in the completely opposite direction. The same goes for Brasse Brännström. And when did you ever see Michael Nyqvist playing a criminal?This film is very different from most other Swedish movies. It's off beat and has a weird tempo and many flaws but at the same time it's original and in no way does it deserve the HUGE bashing it got from the press when it came out.Also - the cinematography in this film is top notch.You either hate it or love it. I also read the director is working on a Directors Cut. The film was never released to DVD - only on rental VHS in Sweden so I'm really looking forward to owning a copy of it.

This might be the worst film ever made.Swedish films like this are in general pretty bad but this one is extremely bad. It's so bad it hurts. The photography is hideous and the sound is even worse. The dialog is laughable and the story is impossible to care about. And it wasn't even enough for a full movie. It ends after only 75 minutes (luckily).You wouldn't believe it after watching it, but there are quite a few great actors in it. Don't know what they're doing there. And even though there are thousands of either fantastic, good or just half-decent films from all times and from the whole world, this one was on Swedish TV tonight. Why?

"Hjärta av sten" means "heart of stone" in English. To be frank, I consider this movie embarrassing to Sweden in general and the Swedish film industry in particular. And you probably need a heart of stone in order to stomach this particular flick.The storyline isn't too complicated. A Russian hit man travels to Stockholm (the capital of Sweden) and kill someone. And ends up with a Swedish police officer, who recently returned from Russia, on his tail. And I guess most of us can figure out the rest without putting too much strain on the "little gray ones". Besides that, the movie is so cliché-laden that it sometimes felt more like a comedy than an action flick.Now, a weak storyline doesn't necessarily mean that the movie is a total failure. Good acting and dialog can more than adequately compensate for a weak storyline. In case that there ARE good acting and dialog, that is. And that is not the case here. The dialog is shallow and borders on ridiculous from time to time, while the acting is downright horrible. Not even Allan Svensson, who I consider to be one of the most experienced and talented actors in Sweden (and most Swedish actors/actresses ARE good, mind you) manage to pull it off. (Well, he might have found himself lacking motivation, considering what he had to work with.) Singer Therese Grankvist show us why her place is behind a mike, and not in front of a camera. We also have the usual gang of Russian mobsters - They all look and sound the same to me (sweat pants/jeans and black leather jackets, and a crew cut), but that makes it more believable.There are a few nice looking shots, though. But I'm not sure if the movie itself deserves any credit for that, since it seem to be stock footage.The bottom line, this is a downright horrible movie. I can't remember watching anything so bad made in this country since "Sökarna" made it to the movie theaters some 10 or 15 years ago.

"Hjärta av sten" (Heart of Stone) is definitely the worst Swedish movie I have seen in many years. We are used to the fact that Swedish crime fiction and movies have a remarkable international standard. Henning Mankell and Åke Edwardsson sell extraordinary well not even in Scandinavia, but in many other countries. Kjell Sundvalls movie "The Hunters" starring Rolf Lassgård and Lennart Jähkel has a well deserved IMDB-average of 7.3 points, I could name a lot of other examples, among them some features of the Beck-series with Peter Haber."Heart of stone" is the story of a Russian mafia killer who happens to be on the same plane to Stockholm as tough and brutal policeman Ronny Asplund (played by the otherwise brilliant actor Allan Svensson). A murder is committed by the Russian killer and thereafter we are witnessing an orgy of unmotivated violence among characters without any content. The dialogues are almost ridiculous; the decent colleague of inspector Asplund for instance always says something like "Please. Don't do that! No.", whenever Asplund is beating up or humiliating suspects involved.Fortunately the film is over after 75 minutes, but even earlier you realize that every minute you spent on this was just a waste of time.