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Dom Robinson reviews
Metrodome Distribution Ltd
- Cert:
- Cat.no: MTD 5223
- Running time: 96 minutes
- Year: 2003
- Pressing: 2006
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 12 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: Danish
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: The Making of The Green Butchers, Meat is Murder: Make-up and prosthetics featurette, Trailers
Director:
- Anders Thomas Jensen
(Adams æbler, Flickering Lights, The Green Butchers)
Producers:
- Kim Magnusson and Tivi Magnusson
Screenplay:
- Anders Thomas Jensen
Music:
- Jeppe Kaas
Cast:
- Svend: Mads Mikkelsen
Bjarne/Eigil: Nikolaj Lie Kaas
Astrid: Line Kruse
House Hans: Nicolas Bro
Tina: Bodil Jørgensen
Holger: Ole Thestrup
Reverend Villumsen: Aksel Erhardtsen
The Green Butchers has been compared to Delicatessen as a way to blend black comedy and food, but while there’s some good use of style in this new movie and has some great lines and verbal exchanges, it falls short of being the classic I was hoping for it to be.
Svend (Mads Mikkelsen) and Bjarne (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), albeit the former in particular, are getting disillusioned working for oppressive butcher boss Holger (Ole Thestrup) who belittles them on a daily basis and keeps them in the back room to prepare food. Before long they start up their own shop but trade is thin on the ground and the fact they’ve each taken out a huge loan for this – a million Kroner (about £90,000) each, means it’s got to be a success. Svend’s mortgaged his house to the hilt and Bjarne’s twin brother, Eigil, is a vegetable on life-support after an accident seven years earlier that also killed his parents and his wife. Turning off the machine that keeps Eigil alive will secure him that capital.
Accidentally, a tradesman gets shut in the freezer overnight as Svend closes up, but then, since his personal life is falling apart, he decides to turn a negative into a positive and puts the dead worker to good use as food for his customers, or ‘speciality meat’ as the DVD back cover called it. Other people who pass by include House Hans (Nicolas Bro), so-called because he his name is Hans and he sells houses as well as this particular shop, Tina (Bodil Jørgensen), Svend’s estranged wife and Astrid (Line Kruse, who is married to the movie’s director), a new girl in Bjarne’s life and one who he doesn’t really want dragged into this mess; and Volger, their ex-boss who is now jealous of their success. How many of these, and other characters, will end up dipped in marinade and served to customers is something that will remain to be seen.
However, the problem with The Green Butchers is that it’s very slow-moving and a bit disjointed at times – especially with one of Bjarne’s troubled relatives, so the whole thing starts to drag. It would probably work better as a 60-minute drama as there are a few repetitive parts of the plot that could be cut out to make it tighter, which I won’t divulge here as that really would spoil it for you but when you watch it you’ll know what I mean.
There are also no particular surprises here. To have the plot basis explained to you whether above in this review or anywhere else is usually one thing with extra things to be discovered while watching it. The only carrot trying to tempt the proverbial donkey here is if/when the town residents will ever find out. Svend is not a sympathetic character so elicits no sympathy from viewer and Bjarne’s compliance in all this seems to kick in too soon and is unconvincing.
Oh and before you ask, Svend’s hairstyle isn’t real and if this film is served up as a remake for mainstream audiences then the only one who looks close to Mads Mikkelsen is William Fichtner, who I first saw in Contact, then later in Armageddon and Go, but who will best be known at present as Sheriff Tom Underlay in cult TV drama Invasion.
The movie is presented in anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen but while outdoor and bright scenes are fine, the picture quality is poor with pixellation in dark scenes the likes of which you’d only expect on Freeview(!) Of similar disappointment, to a degree, is that while this was made with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, it was never used for split-surround effects save for one scene where Bjaern drives his car from the rear-left to the front in a night scene.
The Making of The Green Butchers (25 mins) is presented in 16:9 letterbox with film clips in their original ratio and mixes those in with chat from the key cast and crew members, plus on-set footage and it also touches on explanations of how props and make-up form what we see, such as when Eigil is in his hospital bed… which leads us nicely on to Meat is Murder: Make-up and prosthetics featurette (11 mins) in which body parts are featured in more detail, but the explain it’s done in such a way so that they don’t go over the top with bodies aplenty and it just looks an unrealistic situation.
There’s also two trailers, one that runs for just over two minutes and is in anamorphic 2.35:1, plus a second, shorter, theatrical one (1 min) which is in 16:9 letterbox and for which the print is so washed out I wonder where it was dug up from.
The latter three supplementary pieces each have a second chapter added right at the end so you can quickly skip to the end to see how long something is. The first, strangely, doesn’t have this. I know not all distributors do this type of thing at all but it is handy at times. However, it wouldn’t hurt to stick some chapters in the extras as well.
Talking of that, at a count of 12 this film is woefully under-chaptered. At least one per five minutes should be a minimum requirement but here there are sections that go on for quite a bit longer between them. Even at obvious breaks in the plot, or at scene changes, these are absent – why? The main menu features a short amount of footage from the film that repeats and since the language is in Danish, English subtitles are included. Alas, going back into the menu for any reason turns these off(!)
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.