This surprise Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Film spotlights what a delightful haven Denmark is for children with homicidal tendencies. A young boy can beat up another with a bicycle pump, blow up vans, and punch his father in the stomach, and the youth will be completely forgiven and allowed to stay in school. And in the end, he will transform into a loving lad, of course.

Moral: Coddle the potential cutthroat in your life and he’ll become a pussycat, unlike in real life where bastards become bigger bastards.

In a Better World does endeavor to be more complex than that, but its screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, who’s fared much better with The King is Alive (2000), Brothers (2004), and Mifune’s Last Song (1999), has shoehorned a happy ending onto all of his characters, one that clearly belongs to Pollyanna II.

The Disney-esque finale aside, what Anders is trying to explore here is how a mortal should cope in an unendingly violent society. Should he follow the advice of Matthew: “Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Or should he take a stand? But doesn’t retribution breed more retribution that will eventually lead to war? Or can a man of peace make a difference?

Such a man is Anton (Mikael Persbrandt, now better known as Ola’s dad in Sex Education), a doctor working in an African refugee camp, who’s daily dealing with victims of malnutrition and violence: patients missing limbs or just slightly hacked up. But then pregnant women are suddenly being carried into his makeshift hospital on a regular basis with their stomachs slashed open. It seems a brutal local tyrant is betting on the fetuses’ sex, and then has to find out the answer immediately. So what happens when this monster himself shows up needing treatment? What is Anton’s moral responsibility?

Jump to Denmark where Anton’s wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), from whom he’s currently separated, is trying to raise their two sons. The oldest Elias (Markus Rygaard), however, is not blossoming under her care. Bullied at school daily, he also has to constantly deal with his bicycle tires being deflated. Life is hell for him until the arrival from London of a new schoolmate, Christian (Willian Johnk Nielsen).

Christian, whose mother has just died from cancer, is mad at the world and refuses to be anyone’s underdog. He befriends Elias and beats off the bullies between lashing out at his own father, whom he accuses of wishing his mother’s death.

Then Anton shows up on the scene and takes his two sons and Christian on a daytrip. In the midst of this outing, Anton gets punched in the face by a ruffian and refuses to punch back. He becomes a wimp in the eyes of the boys, but he tries to explain the uselessness of combating brute force with brute force. The lads won’t have any of it. But then remember how upset Jim Stark (James Dean) got that his dad (Jim Backus) wore an apron at home in Rebel Without a Cause. Young males, in Western society, need a butch pa as a role model apparently.

So what is the right ethical stance to take with bullies, hooligans, and sociopaths? Apparently, it depends. There is a time for Gandhi’s restraint and a time for Rommel’s fierceness.

But instead of actually making you care, the film’s disjointedness, clichés, and reality irregularities pull you away as much as the fine performers sometimes pull you back into the tale. One wishes Danish director Susanne Bier, who has an affinity for the overwrought and who succeeded to a greater degree with Brothers (2004) and After the Wedding (2006), had watched Truffaut’s 400 Blows before commencing on this project. She might have then learned that less can be more and that a final frozen screen shot that doesn’t answer every question is more forceful than a hug.

In the end, though, here are two stories that instead of complementing each other rather rub each other raw competing for screen time. In a better film, they would have left you devastated.

Originally published at https://culturecatch.com.

Lilian T. Mehrel’s dramedy, Honeyjoon, winner of the Tribeca AT&T Untold Stories Award, sports a doleful essence tinged with frivolity. Lela (the superb Amira Casar) with her daughter June (Ayden Mayeri), have flown to the Azores, a favorite locale of her late husband. Within a few days, the pair, on the first anniversary of his death, plan to honor him by throwing a clipping of his hair into the sea.

As Lela, a therapist by trade, notes: “He loved life so much. Always with a cappuccino under the sun. But life betrayed him. His body betrayed him.”

However, this farewell trip for Poppa is not uniting the two mourners as they had expected it would. In the States, Mom’s stationed on the East Coast while June’s escaped her to the West. The duo seldom interact. Could June possibly be thinking the wrong parent died? Lela wonders aloud.

Of course not. All June wants is to have a good time and meet a guy or two, which might be difficult to accomplish since the hotel they’ve inadvertently booked into is a mainstay for horny honeymooners. Result: no double beds and no single men except for the staff. Yes, she and her oft-bloated mom are delegated to one mattress.

A good time? How will that even be possible?

For the Persian-Kurdish Lela, who years ago escaped from the tyranny of Iran and is still mourning the loss of her country, joy is not expected. Constantly checking her phone for news, especially for any mention of Mansa Hina Amini who was murdered by the “morality” police for not wearing a hijab. Her diligence is rewarded in an unwanted manner: a group of Iranian women have just been arrested for dancing in Amini’s memory, diminishing Lela’s hope even further that she could one day return to her birthplace.

“Can we not have a good day?” the consistently scantily clad June pouts. Please note this clever young woman turned her back on a medical career because she found hospitals too sad. As for learning Farsi to connect with her roots, forget it. Tsk. Tsk.

What follows is a wry tale of mother and daughter clashing and melding and loving each other amidst private masturbatory gropings, gaseous attacks, flirting, and hiking. There’s also their bonding with the affable tour guide João (José Condessa), who might be the wisest of the threesome. At least he is when asked about happiness by a despondent June. He, a surfer, responds, “Nobody’s happy all the time. Happiness comes in waves, in little moments, but it’s not forever, even more reason to ride the wave when it comes.”

(Honeyjoon has opened in New York at the IFC Center and in LA at the Laemmle Royal. It will then screen at the Laemmle Glendale on June 26, and open in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center, with additional markets nationwide to follow.)

Alexander the Great once mistakenly noted: “I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.” Clearly, the conqueror formed this faulty notion having not met the ewes and rams grazing on George (Hugh Jackman) the shepherd’s farm in The Sheep Detectives.

But before we get to the woolies, please note that Mr. Jackman, although he is a grand songster and hoofer, has achieved much of his fortune and fame over the years by portraying Wolverine, a presence that could trigger mass heart attacks among any flock of livestock.

Here, with his claws retracted, he plays an agreeable vegetarian so in love with his sheep, he individually names them, gambols through his fields with their offspring, and daily reads detective stories to his baaing pals. This is all before he’s found dead one morning by Lily, the smartest of sheep (voiced by Julia Louis Dreyfus) and Mopple, the most worldly of sheep (voiced by Chris O’Dowd).

Based on a bestselling German novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, with a screenplay by Craig Martin (The Last of Us), direction by Kyle Balda (Minions), and produced by the folks who have supplied us with Sense and Sensibility, The Substance, and Cocaine Bear, one of the main challenges here was to shape an entertainment that wasn’t too cutesy like Shari Lewis’s Lamb Chop or too outre like Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Icelandic Lamb (2021) in which an ewe gives birth to a boy with a sheep’s head. I won’t go into specifics. What happens in Iceland, stays in Iceland.

Not that surprisingly, these creators have mostly succeeded. These ovine creatures chatter amongst each other in standard English with varied accents, comprehend the chatter of us fallible humans, and are bigoted against anything born during the winter months. They could be from Brooklyn. Unequivocally, this herd should entertain most adult filmgoers and a whole lot of the prepubescent.

However, be aware that these sheep have been sheltered from what goes on in the outside world, having never left the field.

Checking out George’s corpse, Lily is confounded. She didn’t know “death” was for real. She was brought up believing humans became clouds in the sky like her mates did. Mopple enlightens Lily on the spot but avoids telling her that recipes exist for “Moroccan-Style Braised Lamb” and “Lamb Patties with Fried Onions and Tahini Yogurt Sauce.”

So how did George wind up as he has? The buffoonish Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun), the lone local police officer in the abutting small town, believes the shepherd had a heart attack. The sheep know better and set out to find their keeper’s killer. After all, they have been exposed to dozens of murder mysteries already. How could real life differ?

There is a happy ending, of course, with a sentimental closing that will have you comprehend Little Bo-Peep’s anguish the next time you hear her rhyme. Also, I was unable to guess the killer’s identity, which was a plus.

With a starry cast that also includes Emma Thompson and Nicholas Galitzine plus the voices of Bella Ramsey, Regina Hall, and Patrick Stewart, The Sheep Detectives has enough charm, silliness, suspense, wit, and lush cinematography to make this a perfect outing for families and singles. Just be prepared to cover your eyes when the wild dogs show up.