Out in the country of Vånga, Sweden, Alex endures his ex-military Father’s demanding and verbally abusive posture. His only relief is spending time with Anna who is in a similar circumstances with her mother. The two spend many of their days together amusing themselves on the church piano until Anna is forced to move away to Stockholm, leaving Alex to face his father’s wrath alone. Alex runs away for his childhood home and, years later, becomes a popular piano recording artist influenced by his time with Anna. When he returns to Vånga during a time of countrywide unrest to purchase that same church piano of his fond memories, Sweden comes under attack by an unknown force as major roadways out of the country have been blown to smithereens, every power station is the target for destruction, and the rain is contaminated with an airborne chemical that makes people lose their memories and become disoriented. Alex has to reconnect with his father in order to save Anna, the love of his youth, to survive the unthinkable.
An invasion on the scale that you’ve never seen blitzes with explosive stunt work and stunning visual effects. Victor Danell’s action-drama “The Unthinkable” comes out of nowhere with a hard stop pivot of a love story turned survive at any cost as the film’s country of origin becomes warzone raided without mercy. Under the original title “Den blomstertid nu kommer” in the native tongue, Danell directs and writes “The Unthinkable” along with co-writer and star Christoffer Nordenrot, though credited as their collective production group, as the two team up again after nearly a decade after working on the comedy “Soundcheck,” directed by Danell. What started as a crowdfunded Kickstarter campaigned ended up being a multi-million dollar production and with such growing fascination amongst eager fans, the 2018 found more financial backing from the former Swedish cinema chain company, SF Bio AB, now known as Filmstaden and is presented as the first feature film of a filmic collective known as Crazy Pictures in co-production with CO_Made and Film I Väst.
As mentioned, writer Christoffer Nordenrot finds himself at the center of the story as Alex, a passionate pianist fighting back against well-armed, well-supplied unknown militant forces all the while processing a dam breaking flood from the rebuilding of shattered emotions when returning to his quaint hometown after abruptly escaping his overbearing father (Jesper Barkselius). Socially awkward with an obsessive proclivity, but wielding an intellectual thought pattern, Alex appears to be a person likely on the spectrum, but bottles much of his emotions internally, biting his lip at every moment his father disparages him or his absconding mother. When his only friend in the world, a girl named Anna (Lisa Henni, “Haunted Evil Dead”) whose roughly the same age, is being pulled away from Vånga to live in Stockholm with her mother, Alex undergoes a rapid descension of one heart ache to another that leads to him able to flourish and exceed on his own as a new wave pianist, engineering a combination of electronic beats of sound machines with the simplicity of soul from the piano to arouse his repressed emotions for an grandstand audience. Alex finds his way back Vånga for personal gain, a childhood piano him and Anna shared making music over, and to attend the sudden death of his mother from a previous, individual attack in Sweden, but what he stumbles into is avoiding his father at all costs, being swept into a returned Anna’s radial allure, and, oh yea, a massive proclamation of war by an aggressive, chemical warfare and shoot-on-sight enemy of the Swedish people. This is where I find Alex to have a chip-on-his-shoulder complex unhealthy for everyone around him as he doesn’t look past the past and punitively causes discord with his father, who is trying to save not only the last standing power station in all of Sweden himself, but essentially trying to save his entire country, and Anna when Alex finds out she has a husband and child after an afternoon of rollicking in the hay and sharing various moments around town. Performance wise, Nordenrot might not be the action star of tomorrow in his character’s one note of early on narcissism and bad judgement, but challenges himself in the role by losing and gaining weight to accomplish years of age appearances from teenage boy to mid-30’s man and is good enough to swashbuckle against relentless military helicopters and a slew of men capping of M60 machine guns in his direction. Pia Holverson, Krister Kern, Alexej Manvelov, Magnus Sundberg, and Ulrika Bäckström round out “The Unthinkable’s” cast.
With a runtime of 129 minutes, “The Unthinkable” has a lot of story to tell with an ample amount, practically divided in evenly, imparted into two stories – one forgotten romance and family squabbles rekindled and the other a bombardment of annexing Sweden from the country’s own residents by deadly force. The pivot also never feels gradual as act one is all about teenage Alex and Anna growing more than just accustomed together despite lingering family troubles. Once completing the transition from boyhood to successful music man, an irksome sensation still nags in the back of Alex’s mind as he can’t find happiness in all of the boo-koo-bucks his albums and concerts afford him. This leads “The Unthinkable” into a territory of complete selfishness by waterlogging a Red Dawn offshoot concoction, teetering on speculation of Russian invaders eroding the memories in some aspect of chemical weathering, with Alex being one hell of a selfish guy and he’s the supposed hero of the story, but for the sake of me can’t explain his inabilities look past his father’s conspiratorial obsessions and anger issues, his muse’s moving on her with her life with a family after he fled his hometown, and he definitive choice of unable to live with the fact that she’ll never be with him despite all the adversity raining down upon him at the same moment he internally crumbles at his pent up emotions. Cynicism drives the story to a tainted sham ending that’s supposed to be touching and full of heartfelt sacrifice on the part of the hero, yet how can a hero commit himself to an irreversible without an inkling of danger against those he’s doing this for? I, personally, feel cheated by “The Unthinkable’s” character arc, but one thing is for sure is the seamless practical and visual effects action of top shelf quality. Between the great stunt work of remote control tractor-trailers to the computer generated helicopter crashes, reality and fantasy blur to the point where your brain can’t tell the difference. “The Unthinkable” excels in heart-racing action and thrills with narrow escapes from disasters.
An assault on not only the soul of the country of Sweden, but also on it’s people’s memory banks as Crazy Pictures’ spins Russian meddling into an extreme aggression with an epic imperious campaign in “The Unthinkable” that attacks the visual cortex with jaw-dropping affray. Magnet Releasing, a subsidiary of Magnolia pictures, presents “The Unthinkable” in a widescreen, 2.39:1 aspect ratio, and has made boots on the ground showings in theaters and on-demand this month on May 7th. Hannas Krantz, another member of the Crazy Pictures collective group, delivers the war at home on Swedish soil with hard lighting, greyly somber moments of confusion and fleeing, and yellow gunfire illuminated nights after an airy love story, basking in warm, inviting yellows and pleasing in comfortable locales, crumbles to harden our narrative hero. Krantz leaves just enough negative space for the VFX team to implement their movie magic in the makings of a clandestine assault. There were no bonus scenes during or after the credits. Becoming lost in “The Unthinkable’s” high powered effects can become enthralling when climbing the latter of every scene being just as intense and bigger than the last; however, Alex’s arc of a lovesick boy never fully exits from the grown up version of himself, thwarting any kind redemption and respect because of very unlikable and intense egomania.
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