GFF 2021: Shorta

This sinewy thriller from Denmark presents us with a very familiar setup, combining an old movie trope with a ripped-from-the-headlines premise. Veteran cop Anders (Lohmann), a racist hothead with a beer gut and a chip on his shoulder, is teamed up with the younger, empathetic, straightlaced Høyer (Sears). He’s been asked by his commanding officer to keep his older, more volatile colleague in check. Tensions are high in Copenhagen; specifically in the deprived, crime-ridden neighbourhood of Svalegarden (a district invented for the film), where the inhabitants are reeling from the brutal beating of a 19-year-old Black resident by local law enforcement.

A wrinkle appears in the shopworn good cop-bad cop dynamic with the introduction of Amos (Zayat), a Arab teen who Anders harasses and subsequently arrests for no reason while on patrol in Svalegarden. The estate is already a tinderbox ready to ignite, and this latest piece of heavy-handed policing sets off an all-out attack from local youths and leaves the two cops and their wiry detainee stranded in Svalegarden with no backup and no transport out.

The switch from Danish Training Day knockoff to a pulpier siege thriller that owes no small debt to the films of Walter Hill (particularly Assault on Precinct 13 and The Warriors) significantly ups Shorta’s adrenaline. Directors Anders Ølholm and Frederik Louis Hviid, both making their debut, show a talent for elegant action filmmaking, with Svalegarden becoming a concrete maze from which the trio need to escape, but around every corner is a new obstacle in their way. Less finely calibrated, unfortunately, is Shorta’s script, which is comfortable when trading in movie clichés but messy when addressing real-world morality. 

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Shorta has its UK premiere at Glasgow Film Festival, screening 28 Feb to 3 Mar – tickets here