A Second Chance

Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is the saving grace of this Danish melodrama, playing a policeman whose duty to protect becomes urgent and primal when he claps eyes on a badly neglected baby. Director and genre specialist Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, Brothers) presents a graphic representation of child neglect, but the events that lead to the detective kidnapping the infant and passing him off as his own are far-fetched in the extreme. Evidently, Bier views these awkward early plot machinations as a necessary contrivance to cue questions about parental responsibility and social stereotypes, which provide the meat and bones of the story. And the second half of the film is certainly thought-provoking and tense, as the kidnapper is enlisted to investigate his own crime. Maria Bonnevie gives an affectingly eerie turn as the cop's burdened wife, but it's Waldau, with his gut-wrenching performance as a decent man for whom the line between right and wrong has blurred, who keeps it all together when the story looks like falling apart.