5 out of 5

Director: Richard Holm

I was pretty ready to classify this as a Johan side story.  A better one than usual, with a more interesting topic – a style of robbery “sold” to different groups, including some 16 year old kids (hence the translation of the titled as ‘undercover kids…’ though I can’t get ‘Barn Infiltration’ out of my head) – but still, a side Johan story that doesn’t really do much for the core characters beyond give them something to do.  There was even the obligatory ‘let’s call our main secondary character for information’ move that now involved both Johan with Frank AND Sophie with Seth… and then there’s that cold opening of Johan getting shot (and then a flashback to ‘earlier’) that seems to be priming us for not much happening so here’s some extra drams up front.  So, again, ‘Barn’ wasn’t doing much to convince me it’d be more than a side story, except for being handled in the 2012 dramatic stylings of the last few series’ entries.

AND THEN THEY PULLED THE RUG OUT FROM UNDER ME.

I mean, this has been a common element in the Johan flicks as well, but the moves are generally subtle payoffs that work on a character level – Johan’s trickle of reveals regarding his past, Sophie’s power struggles, and etcetera.  When the deaths have come or the group has been rearranged, it’s shaken things up effectively and kept the movies feeling real, but there’s still something subtle to it.  These aren’t glorified, overly violent or boomingly scored camera-close-up-on-my-acting-abilities, moments – they happen, people react and respond and the film moves on.  It’s what’s made these films so normal and yet so unconventionally awesome at the same time.  ‘Barn’ doesn’t exactly go against the grain on that, but it does drop some big punches, and the first of these it leaves in play for the last third of the flick, which makes for some interesting in-the-scenes changes (normally this stuff is announced toward film’s end and then we see the relative fallout next movie), and the second of these… isn’t unexpected, but they roll it out so much more sympathetically than I would’ve thought, that the punch is effectively winding.  Also unique here is that we end on a cliffhanger.  This somewhat pegs the thing as a DTV affair (I don’t know if this one had a theater release or not), but the rest of the movie is professionally handled such that it balances out this “next week on Johan…” move to not feel like a cheap ploy.  …Plus, it’s a damn fine cliffhanger.

But besides all this is that it wasn’t a side story – as Johan and crew get involved with recruiting a new informant and rifling old ones to try to bring down this crime-selling group, we get closer to all of our principles, the decision to try and turn a 15-year old into an ‘undercover kid’ creating a nice rift in GSI that’s handled with the scripters’ trustworthy unflourished tact.  And double besides that, even if it was a side story, it was an interesting one, with a Finn vs. Swede gang rivalry (I think) amped up to some pretty tensely gritty moments and the money laundering particulars fun.  This makes the cold opening a pointless diversion, but at the same time, it gave our filmmakers a chance to shake up the typical formula of ‘crime of the film’ that normally kicks things off.

All around solid and smart.  Some of the ‘artificially lit’ shots – a nighttime scene, the office scenes – look sort of gross in the digital format, just that cheap, too-real look that DV can have, but this is only at a couple point.  The majority of the flick is shot and edited well, with nice, cold cinematography for the action sequences.  I wish more people watched these (or more people I know) so we could OMG at each other at the awesome plot payoffs.  Alas, must I OMG at myself in the mirror, often while wearing a dress.  (omg did you see that dress he was wearing omg and johan falk)