In a Better World

Director Susanne Bier’s new film is pretty much what you expect in a foreign-language Oscar winner: pretty to behold, nicely acted, socially responsible, absorbing and ultimately less affecting than it tries to be. Mikael Persbrandt stars as a doctor who works long, morally challenging stints in an African refugee camp while his son (Markus Rygaard), back home in Denmark, falls under the influence of another kid (William Jøhnk Juels Nielsen) who’s just angry enough about his own absentee-parent situation to stand up rather viciously to a school bully. As abetted by screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, Bier’s violence-begets-violence message is itself a tad bullying. And yet it also seems to pull some punches, suppressing the messiness of life and human motive in order to stay on message. It’s an important question: What kind of world do we want? How about one that’s a little less restrictive and patronizing?