Critical Reception
The film has been widely praised as a psychological study and "semi-noir". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times compared it to the Dostoyevsky novel Crime and Punishment. For the New York Times, Janet Maslin praised the principal performance by Skarsgård and added that "Mr. Skjoldbjærg's understated, elliptical direction keeps the material dangerous and volatile, with frequent small touches of the unexpected as Engstrom shows increasing signs of strain."
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