Jackpot

Every year comes the time when colorful Christmas decorations adorn department stores and also make the home particularly festive. However, the days when the Christmas tree necessarily had to be green are over, at the latest with the growing popularity of artificial trees. There are now silver, golden or blue Christmas trees - and even red ones. However, these are created in a very special, not at all Christmassy way. Bestselling author Jo Nesb&oslash shows us how; together with director Magnus Martens in the pitch-black comedy Jackpot.

At the centre of the rather macabre action is Oscar (Kyrre Hellum), who works as a supervisor in a factory where ex-cons make plastic Christmas trees. One day Oskar wakes up in a strip joint surrounded by dead bodies and the police, who of course want to find out what went down. Unfortunately, Oskar is not only the only witness, but also a prime suspect. But Oskar doesn't want to be held responsible for the carnage. And so he wants to tell the investigating inspector Solør (Henrik Mestad) everything he can still remember. But the story of how the three former inmates Thor (Mads Ousdal), Billy (Arthur Berning) and Tresko (Andreas Cappellen) persuaded him to form a betting syndicate, with which the four men then actually hit the really big jackpot, does not meet with much approval from the inspector - until Oskar gets to the point where it was a question of splitting the winnings.

Jackpot provides with a convoluted narrative, through which the individual puzzle pieces of the story gradually fit together into an amusing overall picture, as well as with some wonderfully macabre ideas for lovers of somewhat blacker humor for 86 minutes of extremely good entertainment. In many moments this is typically Scandinavian dry and calmly staged. Much speed is to be expected only in a few scenes. But who appreciates the humor of Nordic gangster comedies, which will be able to break out into hearty laughter here so many times.

About the many plot twists should not be revealed too much at this point, even if attentive viewers can guess the end relatively long before its revelation. For it is the many little unexpected things, filled with macabre bizarreness, that make Jackpot quite a lot of fun. Sure, the wheel isn't reinvented here, and here and there the humor hits a little over the top. But even if the movie isn't a real Jackpot, it doesn't torture the viewer for a minute with unnecessary boredom, but offers all those who like it a bit more grotesque, just the best entertainment of the more bloody kind. For all friends of the Scandinavian humor this somewhat different Christmas film is therefore an absolute must and absolutely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp