Coming out of prison after serving 12 years for murder can be a disorienting experience, but Ulrik (Stellan Skarsgard) shot a man as a hired killer, not as an emotional revenge-seeker, a robber, or someone in a passionate argument. That makes it both easier and more difficult for him to return to a normal life, and that's the most interesting part of "A Somewhat Gentle Man," an interesting, if sometimes uneven tale from Norway.
His former boss, Rune Jansen (Bjorn Floberg), a swaggering small-time hood in this rather small city, has been fronting him for the jail time, sending money to Ulrik's former wife and to his son, and wants him to return to the three-person gang. Ulrik isn't very interested, preferring work as a mechanic in a garage with a kindly owner. The third member of the gang is Rolf (Gard B. Eidsvold), fascinating in his ability to accept bullying and insults from Jansen. He's amazing, and fun to watch.
Ulrik also returns to an active sex life, though the women chasing him, including his former wife ("let's have a quickie," she tells him, and bends over the sink in the restaurant where she works), are the fiercest set of harridans since the daughters of Melissa Leo in "The Fighter." Ulrik's landlady, Karen Margerethe (Jorunn Kjellsby), looks like a cross between the Queen of Hearts and the worst blind date of your adolescence. She brings dinner to his room, insists on sex before he can eat, then sits silently while he eats and they watch the Polish television version of "Dancing With the Stars."
Then he rescues a battered wife who is the bookkeeper at the garage, but that relationship also ends badly. Skarsgard, a fine actor, is a native of Sweden whose range has included roles in everything from "Hamlet" and "The Pirates of the Caribbean" to cat-food commercials. He has been making movies for more than 40 years, and has been a mainstay with the Swedish National Theater.
Watching him as Ulrik is fascinating; he lacks many social graces, doesn't smile, says little, keeps his own counsel. Watching him reach out to a son he has not seen in 12 years is a frightening experience for him, and coming to grips with the fact that his son's girlfriend is afraid of him and her parents are disdainful hurts him a lot. Repairing the relationship is gimmicky, but when Skarsgard smiles, as wide as a horizon, it's all worthwhile.
A Somewhat Gentle Man opens today at the Tivoli.
—Joe