Copenhagen. Torkild is and his friends Peter, Arne and Stefan are friends and gangsters. Since Torkild owes money to a mafia boss, he is assigned to steal a briefcase from a safe, not look at what is inside, and bring it to the mafia boss. Naturally, Torkild looks into the briefcase, finds out it contains millions of Danish krone inside, so he and his friends flee with a car with it. The plan to flee to Barcelona, but since Peter was wounded in the shootout, they stop at a barn in the middle of a forest. Little by little, they start liking the place and the hunter and doctor in the nearby town, buy it, and decide to renovate it into a restaurant. Stefan's girlfriend Hanne arrives and informs him she is pregnant, but he eventually decides to stay at the restaurant. The mafia boss arrives to kill them, but the hunter shoots him and his henchmen with a machine-gun. The publicity of the event causes the number of guests of the restaurants to skyrocket.
Voted in one 2023 local national internet poll as the best Danish film up until that point, Anders Thomas Jensen's feature length debut film is one heck of a crazy, wild fun. A blend of ''Grosse Pointe Blank'' and ''In Bruges'', ''Flickering Lights'' has such insane and wacky jokes and gags, sometimes even so grotesque that it is on the verge of being too much, that the viewers at first cannot believe it, but as more and more of such jokes keep coming, this mood consolidates itself. But as mad as all this seems, everything has its why and because, so that the whole storyline has a purpose in the end, with every detail leading to a punchline later on. Most of this black comedy stems from interactions between these characters, who all have their own frequency of humor. In the opening scenes, the main character, gangster Torkild, has a dinner at a restaurant with his soon to be ex-girlfriend Therese, who gives him a book as a gift: ''I already gave it to you before, but you threw it away, so now I'm giving it to you once more.'' When Torkild returns to his apartment late at night, he notices the door is unlocked, so he pulls out his gun and shoots in the dark—as the lights turn on, it is revealed his friends were preparing a surprise birthday party for him, but his friend Peter now holds a smashed, shot wine bottle in his hand.
The movie is full of such type of humor which just keeps its weird blend of laconic, cynical and sardonic humor throughout, and Jensen is able to get away with it, except for maybe three scenes which were misguided. Yet, everything else works. Jensen also gives four childhood flashbacks for each of his four gangster characters, explaining somewhat how they were either traumatized or damaged and became the way they are now. The childhood flashback revolving around Arne is the most painful: as a kid, he persuaded his two friends to go hunting in a forest with a rifle. One of his friends shoots at a pheasant, but then the scream of a boy in the forest is heard. Arne walks up to the wounded boy who was hit accidentally, but tells him it is alright since the rifle was only loaded with blanks, revealing the boy's leg is only scratched. The two boys hear another rifle shot, go back, and find the first boy who shot has committed suicide from guilt. Filled with creative ideas (the mafia boss plays billiard with a pool ball knocking down mini bowling pins), ''Flickering Lights'' is one of the most untypical crime comedy films, with the four gangsters abandoning the city, their previous gangster careers, a pregnant girlfriend and money, to just simply live in peace running a restaurant, with a neat ending that rounds up everything nicely. This is its very own film—you can like it or not, but you have to admit it is original in what it does.
Grade:+++
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