Review of Another Round (2020) by Jluis_001 — 22 Dec 2020

Although Vinterberg uses an incredibly thin premise for his new film, he manages to remember that he has much more talent than he had been showing lately and delivers his best film since The Hunt of 2012. And what a surprise that he achieves it with the same actor from that film ; Mads Mikkelsen.

Another Round tells the story of Martin, he's a history teacher and he's a man who seems out of place, both in his personal life and in his career.

One night over dinner, he and three of his friends and fellow teachers decide to start drinking during their classes and at home, due to a talk about a psychiatrist named Finn Skårderud, who theorized that having a blood alcohol content of 0.050 makes you more relaxed and makes you healthier. The film is advertised as a story that through the same narrative device will talk about alcoholism and once you see what happens on screen when the characters decide to start their experiment, it's quite evident that things will not end very well.

Therefore, that predictability does not help much, but Vintenberg does not weaken towards the simplistic and does not try to make this drama something simplistic. He doesn't do something extraordinary either, but rather that he constructs a story that wanders between the grounds of a tragicomedy and that's very clear with its last act, and especially the ending, because in my opinion it doesn't explore a resolution, but rather opens a door to another outcome that we will not see, but considering the trip, it turns out to be irrelevant.

Another Round could be called simplistic, but neither Vinterberg nor Mikkelsen allow that to happen, and that's what separates it from the bunch.