ETTOR NOLLOR – a two episodes Swedish TV Mini-Series – kicks off with a human leg landing on an old Mercedes. At least in the uncut version shown at Zurich Film Festival it does. Maybe this scene was cut out of the film, as might have been several others. There’s as much sex and violence in this show as in HBO’s True Blood. Well, nearly as much. ETTOR NOLLOR (quite literally: Those who count, the 1s (ettor), and those who don’t, the 0s (nollor)) is about a new breed of gangsters: Hackers. A policeman even gets caught in nostalgia: “Remember how they used to rob banks at gunpoint? That was easier.” And it’s about the “normal” criminal world getting rougher, as international mafias battle for dominion in the shadow world of more or less organized crime.
At a certain point, main thug Karl (Gustaf Skarsgård) complains, that “you can’t trust people any more” … he, who kills at a whim complains about untrustworthyness. Well, tough luck, Karl. The world of crime is changing. And so is the way, in which audiences have to cope with how crime is shown in cinemas and on TV.
ETTOR NOLLOR, directed by Johan Renck (beloved and feared by Gustaf Skarsgård … see his interview in Swedish on Swedish television here ) was shown on svt in February and didn’t sit very well with most of the audience. Too harsh. Too dark. Too realistic? But Sweden is evolving towards a more tolerant worldview, even if its own darker sides are concerned, says actor and script doctor Said William Legue, who plays a slighty shady Moroccan guy named Azad .. here’s an exclusive interview with him in Swedish. ETTOR NOLLOR on sale here at Svt.
One little thing: I did not like the ending … that was uncalled for … and it lacks logic, humans being what we are: greedy to a fault.