Touches You

A different way of telling a story

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

HAMILTON: IN THE INTEREST OF THE NATION is a wonderful example of the sort of weird conspiracy-mongering that afflicts some left- wingers. The plot sees a Swedish secret agent infiltrate a group of Russian arms dealers to find out how they got their hands on Swedish weapons. This allows for the wonderful sight of a Swede trying to blend into the Middle East. The conspiracy, once revealed, goes like this: the CIA hire a PMC (based in Texas, so they must be evil) to kidnap a Swedish scientist and his artillery piece, so that they can blow up the house of an East African imam (with his family -- gotta have that collateral damage) and blame it on al-Shabbab. This will allow the CIA to start a new war, which will keep both them and the PMC happily employed for many years. Luckily our Swedish spook (who murders his own girlfriend by accident - !!! - because of course all soldiers are killing machines) teams up with his buddies in the PLO (who are, regardless of your opinions on Israel/Palestine, still terrorists) to stop them. Needless to say, this is not how the world works. Even as a film this is a failure because, a few nice still images of Stockholm at night and some cool Swedish military boats aside, everything is slow and stilted; the action scenes in particular are horribly edited and utterly unbelievable.

In my personal opinion this movie is a much more realistic version of any "American style" "secret agent" movie. It has action, never gets boring, it has fights and explosions. What differs the main character most from let's say a "transporter", is that the movie is not giving him one of the usual stereotypes of "bad stories from the past". In fact the movie does start with quite a shocking moment, something one rarely seen in other action movies, and later on in the movie there is actually a moment of thought in terms of "even agents are under law". So if you once in a while get bored by transporter 3 and would like to see an unknown but credible face on screen, I think you will like this movie.

Exciting, good acting, scenes full of atmosphere. I hope to see more of Michael Persbrandt and the crew. I like the bad guy, really bad. Also in Mouna there are interesting perspectives. So. Wish the movie was longer - I would like to know the characters better... Shares some of its qualities with the new Bond-movies, ethically, aesthetically and Plot-wise. Well done by the female director! And by the way: High-level sound-work and music. I think that some of the mediocre reviews are connected to the fact that the movie is a threat to established concepts like 007.. So please - go on develop the unique Hamilton-concept.

When this novel came in the 80s, the Russian communists were the bad guys. Now, it's an American private army, with good CIA connections, being lead from Houston. Through terrorist attacks, they want to provoke a war between Ethiopia and Somalia. Which is good for business.The films about Commander Hamilton are always comical. It doesn't become less so, from the fact that the actor playing the main character is almost 50, which doesn't prevent him from being the winner in many close combat fights.As usual in these sort of movies, the intelligence service and the politicians are bad parodies on everything. Entertaining yes, but in the wrong way.