Review: FLAME & CITRON

The personal moral complexities of war are what stand at center stage in FLAME & CITRON. The film chronicles the heroic efforts of the two Danish men who served as Allie spies and assassins against the Nazis in Denmark during World War II. While their stories are of valor, their realities were of hardship and doubt, constantly living the uncertainty and fear of pretending to be someone else, surrounded by your enemy.

Bent, code name Flame (Thure Lindhardt) is a 23-year old red-haired man seemingly without fear and thoroughly loyal to his cause. Jorgen, code name Citron (Mads Mikkelson) is a middle-aged family man who struggles between his duties to his country and to his family. While Citron is the driver and strategic backup, Flame is the man who literally pulls the trigger. Both men are diligent, rapidly becoming the most wanted figures in the Denmark arena.

Citron is plagued by his realization that he isn’t a natural to this sort of life. He sees that his connection to his family is crumbling, but understands that his call to duty for his Mother Country takes priority to all else, resulting in what becomes his own personal price for fighting this guerilla-style war against the Nazis and the Danish traitors who align themselves with the German occupiers. His resolve will be tested more than once. The true nature of his commitment will be born out of loss.

Mikkelson exudes this persona of a man torn apart on the inside. As a character who consumes pills to refrain from sleep, accompanied by the overwhelming stress of being a hunter and the hunted, not able to trust anyone, his face speaks volumes of the self-inflicted torture he endures.

Flame is initially an ambitious young soldier for his cause, not for fame but for his country. He is loyal and fearless in the face of danger, tasked once and again with the systemic elimination of Danish Nazi collaborators. Slowly and methodically, Flame & Citron pick off their enemy, following their orders handed down from British command. However, something is eating at Flame. He wants nothing more than to attack the heart of the problem, to eliminate the highest German officers placed within Denmark, but London refuses to give Flame authority to carry out these missions.

Driven almost to fanaticism, it is not until Flame begins to experience doubt in his commanding officers that his commitment begins to falter. Flame unveils the complexities intertwined within the nature of wartime espionage. The troubling uncertainty Flame uncovers regarding who he is killing, and killing for, pulls him into a downward spiraling fall into chaos. Misplaced trust becomes Flame’s most formidable enemy. Lindhardt looks the part, playing it well enough to sell the role. The intensity of Flame’s actions is what gives the character substance.

FLAME & CITRON was co-written and directed by Ole Christian Madsen (PRAGUE). Madsen constructs the pace of the film much like the story, slowly and methodically. Patience is the key in both, as much of the title characters’ time is pent waiting; much of the audience’s time is spent waiting in suspense. The film has long, uneasy periods of quiet drama and uneasiness, peppered with moments of sudden violence carried out by both sides. This is a battle fought in the urban theater, one enemy at a time. Madsen focuses on these moments the most, giving them purpose and intensity, making the wait worthwhile.

In some unexpected and curious way, FLAME & CITRON is similar in story and structure to Michael Mann’s PUBLIC ENEMIES. Replace legendary bank robbers fighting the feds with legendary spies fighting a guerilla war, the basic underlying story arc is the same. The primary difference being that Mann successfully glorifies and glamorizes the story of John Dillinger, providing a fantastic score to embellish his story; whereas Madsen portrays Flame and Citron with a more realistic, human perspective that highlights the imperfections of their actions and the very grey moral realm within all wars are fought, lacking virtually any noticeable music to embellish the story.

Overall, FLAME & CITRON is a remarkable film that tells a story based on actual events told from witness accounts, one of many WWII stories that have not before received such attention on a global scale. This is not a Hollywood-style war film. This is not an action-laden thriller. This is a film that studies and dissects the inner workings of the human heart and mind during time of war, picking apart what makes us take sides and how we determine right from wrong, good from bad, when all these lines are blurred.