R: Hit First, Hit Hardest – review

The title, perhaps, is a shade misleading. Where Jacques Audiard's Un Prophète might legitimately claim to have hit first and hardest, this bruising Danish drama piles in behind; an opportunistic sidekick, bustling up to scavenge for scraps. Here again we have a callow, twitchy young prison inmate (played in this case by Johan Philip Asbæk), force-fed through the system, press-ganged into service by a brooding gang boss and forced to earn his spurs in this dog-eat-dog terrain. But if the premise feels as worn as old boots, the delivery is undeniably proficient. Directors Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer shoot in a harsh, docurealist style and ratchet up a bristling level of tension inside four walls.