It starts out with a salesman that has failed in every way possible except for his wife, other than that his financial situation is terrible, his attitude to other people is terrible, and his effort on his quality time with his daughter and wife is terrible too. The worst part is that he doesn't realize how he treats the people around him, and that he is not only ruining others lives, he has forgotten that you have to love yourself, to love others. Hes involved in an accident, and get to see himself, with another perspective. In the end he stands before a great conflict and it he must take the right decision, and see what truly matters in life.

I read somewhere that those who enjoy the directorial work of Anders Thomas Jensen might find themselves enjoying Sorte Kugler. A servile follower of Jensen, I sought this one, the debut of star Anders Mattheson, out immediately.Negative, anger prone, and downright rude, Alex Klein is a real estate agent with serious financial problems and a job he's very likely to lose. His problems are solved when, rather extemporaneously, he dies. Finding himself in a strange pseudo-purgatorial gameshow, he is given the chance to win back his life by overcoming his character flaws.Beginning seriously, with Klein presented as a straight faced and talented salesman, it's not long before we see things quickly revealing themselves. The facade of professionalism soon dissolves to reveal the sardonic and irreverent bitterness which henceforth fills the film. Klein's meanness is consistently amusing, a particular scene in which he firmly demands correct grammar from a friend's casual anecdote deliciously witty. Mattheson's delivery is genuine, sharp, and very funny, making his character more irritatingly irritable by the second. Once we move to the afterlife, however, things take a turn for the worse. The baffling strangeness of the scenes which follow is quite perplexing, as I much assume it intends to be at first. The humour now comes from a variety of sources, none of which match the quality of the original curmudgeonly splendour of Mattheson's ramblings. The scenarios he is placed in by the gameshow are never hilarious, nor are the scenes with its host. It would have worked out a far funnier experience to simply fill the film with Klein behaving in his horrid manner. No narrative structure per-se, granted, but certainly funnier. As it does transpire, we follow a half hour or so of considerable comic potential with an hour of general mediocrity, mixing the occasional laugh with plenty of instances of dead and flat humour, giving the impression of trying too hard. The ending is not bad, even spurning a few laughs, though not particularly great either.After a very strong start offering the sort of black humour admittedly recalling Jensen's work, Sorte Kugler digs itself into a hole it contentedly remains seated in. Failing to live up to the high standard it originally sets, it proves very disappointing, though not unenjoyable.

Too many people focus on what's wrong with everything and everybody, and tends to excel in sarcasm, so they can pour their personal pain out over everybody, who happens to be close by. Just like one of your teachers in school.Then it takes a dramatic event (a kick in the behind) to look at life in a bigger perspective and focus on the happiness which is here now, instead of being grumpy about what went wrong some time ago.This is not new or very deep psychology, but it is always fun to watch the transformation from a grumpy "everything-is-wrong" person to a happy "I like things as they are" person, especially when it is done with wit and humor.You may or may not like the style. I liked it.

In Sorte Kugler (Black Balls) we follow Anders Matthesen as Alex Stein, a not so successful real estate agent. He is rude, jealous, don't pay attention his little daughter or his beautiful wife.His wife is a police officer, something Alex wanted to be as well, but he failed.One day Alex is driving to close a deal on a house, but drops a cup of coffee in his lap, thus resulting in a crash into a car coming from the right.Alex dies, but he doesn't go to heaven or hell. Instead he goes to a special place where he can gamble upon whether or not he'll live or die. It's a series of tests to see if Alex is a good person. Wrong answers results in black balls being put into a tube, right answers puts white balls in another tube. If the white balls overflow first, Alex lives, but if the black balls beats them, Alex dies.As expected, Alex is put through some not very easy situations that calls for extreme (for him) patience and honesty. Anders Matthesen is at his best, being an angry, frustrated Alex and the movie does give us some rather good laughs.I enjoyed the scene with Alex and his mother a lot, perhaps because it kinda reminds me of situations I recognize.But, alas, the movie is over far too quickly. Clocking in at about 80 minutes - barely - it falls a bit short. And the ending is - as has been noted by others - far to glossy and happy. A happy ending is fine, but this is happy in the extreme. I know it's supposed to be funny because of its extremity, but I must admit I was a bit disappointed by how Matthesen wrapped this one up.He has the talent and the wit. A sharp and fast wit. It comes to life in a few scenes during the movie (like when he comments on his sisters way with words and sentence construction, loved that scene), but it seems he either had too little time or too few good ideas for the movie.Had it been 30 minutes longer - 30 minutes of awesome Alex screen time - and the ending been a bit more realistic, I would have given this an 8 or 9. As it is, it's just about a 7.