Stockholm Bloodbath

by Daniel Baldwin

In 1520, Danish King Christian II (aka “Christian the Tyrant”) decided that he just had to have the crown of Sweden and would do anything necessary to snatch it for himself. Up to and including committing a barbaric mass execution that is commonly referred to as the titular “Stockholm Bloodbath”. If that sounds dark, brutal, and deathly serious, it’s because it very much was. Stockholm Bloodbath, however, is anything but serious.

Pitched more in line with bloody historical satires like Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Jalmari Helander’s Sisu, or even Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Mikael Hafstrom’s Stockholm Bloodbath attempts to take this violent slice of Swedish history and fashion a wild, zany exploitation film around it. Unfortunately, unlike those cinematic gems, Hafstrom’s work here falls short on almost every level. It’s not that Hafstrom lacks the talent to do it. The man has previously given us perfectly entertaining films like 1408 and Escape Plan. But there’s just too much off about these proceedings for that to matter.

To its credit, the film does have a good cast filled with the likes of Sophie Cookson, Claes Bang, Emily Beecham, and Ulrich Thomsen, all of whom do their best with what they are given amidst the cacophony of odd filmmaking decisions. The script is a tonal rollercoaster in the worst of ways, pitching from serious to slap-happy from scene to scene. The pacing of the edit is no better, with some sequences dragging at a snail’s pace and others blazing by faster than needed. Such cinematic hyperactivity can be an asset if you have a pitch-perfect script and a crackerjack edit. The aforementioned Tarantino and Ritchie have fashioned entire careers out of this. This has neither a masterful screenplay nor expert editing and instead feels like The Swedish Chef himself might have been at the helm for some scenes.

One can see the movie that everyone involved wanted to make, but the end result just doesn’t pass muster. Perhaps it might play better in its home country, as despite being an English-language film, it is indeed a Swedish production. For this writer, however, what should be a biting piece of violence-filled historical satire just ends up being a bad history lesson told by a chaotic storyteller who doesn’t quite know who their intended audience is or how they even want to tell their tale.