There were many corners of the Second World War which have been neglected by a general history that focuses on the great battles of the Pacific and the Western Front; the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Denmark is just one of them. Ole Christian Madsen's historically-based war thriller Flame & Citron, presents an honorable, if dramatically problematic, attempt to remedy that unawareness.

Starting off in 1944, Madsen's film wastes little time in getting to the crux of the matter. A brief introductory segment uses actual footage of the German occupation to highlight the rage of a conquered people, many of whose own countrymen have gone over to the dark side by working as a bullying uniformed auxiliary for the occupiers. The narration provides a succinct viewpoint towards such collaborators from the resistance, "They were… vermin."

The man providing the narration is 23-year-old Bent Faurschou-Hviid, codenamed Flame for his bright red hair (Thure Lindhardt). A pale and ramrod-straight slip of an assassin, Flame sallies forth from his basement lair to roam the grey stone streets of Copenhagen, cutting down one specially-targeted collaborator after another. No matter that the Gestapo has put a massive price on his head and ultimately makes him the most wanted man in the country, in a stranger-than-fiction twist, Flame stalks the city without fear, his easily-identifiable features visible for all to see.

Flame's partner is the older, married Jørgen Haagen Schmith, alias Citron (Mads Mikkelsen). In contrast to Flame's cool asceticism, Citron is a unshaven and sweaty tangle of pill-shredded nerves. He leaves the actual killing to Flame, except for one fateful instance when he takes the gun (Flame has a thing about killing women, they unnerve him with their tears), and in the tragedy that follows, their whole perfectly calibrated splinter cell begins to unwind.

Being that it is ultimately a spy film, Flame & Citron works overtime to obfuscate the true nature of what's happening. The two fighters at the heart of the story (who would later become national heroes) carry out their orders with somber diligence, even after it becomes apparent that someone, either Hoffman (Christian Berkel), the cunning head of the Gestapo, or their own leadership, is playing them for fools by having them kill the innocent. This opacity of motivation, while a realistic depiction of the double- and triple-cross reality of such urban insurgent operations, extends unfortunately to the film's characterizations as well.

Both Lindhardt and Mikkelsen's performances are vivid enough, but tend toward the two-dimensional. It's hard to see how somebody as nervous and doubt-ridden as Citron would have lasted as long in the war as he did. And Flame seems barely human behind his façade of youth-fired absolutist fanaticism; even secret agents crack a joke once in a while. The same can unfortunately be said for the story's femme fatale, a courier named Ketty (Stine Stengade), who just might be a double-agent, but hardly registers as a person, much less a seductress.

Director Madsen, who also co-wrote the screenplay, has crafted a film that walks the tightrope between efficiently-delivered thrills and investigation into the immorality of war. While his muscular style (rather surprising coming from an ex-Dogma filmmaker) certainly delivers on the action front (he even allows himself a John Woo standoff moment between Hoffman and Flame), Madsen spends more time looking at what this kind of grey-hued warfare does to those who wage it. His methods may not be the most subtle -- even with all the script's moralizing about the killing of innocents, Madsen still loads up his climax with truckloads of Nazi soldiers and a hail of bullets and grenades -- but if nothing else, this is a film that acknowledges one unalloyed truth about war: nobody gets away clean.

Aka Flammen & Citronen.



The fire. It burns.