Ali (Per Graffman), a cabdriver living in Sweden, thought he had left his guerrilla past behind him 18 years ago, but it catches up with him in the opening scenes of "Before the Storm". Addressing him as "Captain," a woman fare (Nasrin Pakkho) knows not only who he is, but what he is capable of doing. Unless he agrees to assassinate the Swedish manufacturer who has been selling trucks that are converted into rocket launchers against their people, her compatriots (and his formerly) will kill the wife and son that he left behind. Although the film does not identify their nationality, it is implicit that they are Kurds since they are being persecuted for their language. Ali has a new family in Sweden. Now married to a Swedish woman, they have two teenaged daughters. The younger has a classmate named Leo (Emil Odepark) who has a crush on her, but whose affections are not returned. Poor Leo is spurned not only by her, but the rest of his classmates who enjoy tormenting him as a "monkeyface". But none are as cruel as Danne (Martin Wallström), an older boy who makes Leo's life a living hell. At knifepoint, he forces Leo to march naked into the girl's locker-room to don the panties of Ali's daughter, the girl he loves. As with students in the American news, Leo decides to take matters into his own hands. He steals his mother's 9 millimeter pistol (she is a police officer) and lures Danne into a wooded area where he forces him to get down on his knees and apologize. In the ensuing altercation, Leo shoots Danne in the chest. The remainder of the film focuses on the crossed paths of Ali and Leo. One is fleeing from the law, particularly from his mother who has discovered a missing bullet in her pistol's chamber. The other is fleeing from his duty as assassin, coerced as it is. In a riveting scene, the two sit in Ali's kitchen in the middle of the night. Just moments after warning Leo that he must turn himself in (he can not run forever), Ali receives a phone call from his blackmailers. They put his first wife on the line to plead for her life. Overhearing this chilling conversation, Leo discovers that Ali is also in the hands of fate. Both of these characters, longing for normalcy and love, are wrenched into another, more frightful reality by circumstances beyond their control. In one case, war in the Mideast. In the other, a sadistic high school bully. By making his two lead characters murderers, young first-time director Reza Persa (born in Iran but living in Sweden since 1980) is confronted with the challenge of making us empathize with decent characters doing indecent things. As he told the audience after the showing, there is no greater challenge facing an artist. Although some Arabs have criticized him for stereotyping them as terrorists, he explained that most Swedes appreciate the film for showing the powerful forces that can make people take desperate actions. In addition, the film effectively confronts stereotypes about the Swedes, although of the opposite sort. When the film debuted, critics found it hard to believe that a Swedish schoolchild would kill a bully in this fashion, but only three months ago such an event took place for the first time in this bland, social-democratic country. Showing far greater gullibility, some critics also questioned whether Swedish manufacturers could be war profiteers. Evidently they never heard of Alfred Nobel, who funded his annual prizes with money he made from the sale of dynamite, a product he invented. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
