The book by Swedish author Jan Guillou is by many considered his best. That might be true in some ways. It tells us about the author's schoolhood in a sadistic and pennalistic public school, there the author comes out as a winner, humiliating and heavily beating up his "opponents", including the stepfather.
The film version is all right, keeping all the sadism and the justified revenge. But there is a lot of ûbermensch thinking here too. The young hero, the author's alter ego, is more intelligent than Schwarzenegger or Bronson, but is he to be accepted without objection? Call that view "moral panic" if you want too; we need more of that panic.
Andreas Wilson is rather good however as the young hero. The film is intense, the battle scenes are hard to see even if you are rather used to action movies, and some of the not violent scenes are rather...well, on high school level. Worth seeing anyway.
The film version is all right, keeping all the sadism and the justified revenge. But there is a lot of ûbermensch thinking here too. The young hero, the author's alter ego, is more intelligent than Schwarzenegger or Bronson, but is he to be accepted without objection? Call that view "moral panic" if you want too; we need more of that panic.
Andreas Wilson is rather good however as the young hero. The film is intense, the battle scenes are hard to see even if you are rather used to action movies, and some of the not violent scenes are rather...well, on high school level. Worth seeing anyway.