Play (2011 film)
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Ruben Östlund |
| Produced by | Erik Hemmendorff |
| Written by | Ruben Östlund Erik Hemmendorff |
| Cinematography | Marius Dybwad Brandrud |
| Edited by | Jacob Secher Schulsinger |
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Production
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Plattform Produktion
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Release date
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Running time
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118 minutes |
| Country | Sweden |
| Language | Swedish |
Play is a 2011 Swedish film drama directed by Ruben Östlund and written by Östlund and Erik Hemmendorff. Inspired by actual court cases, it portrays a group of black boys who rob a smaller group of white boys by the means of a psychological game. The film was heavily debated in the Swedish press. It won the Nordic Council Film Prize in 2012.
In Gothenburg a gang of five black teenage boys act out an elaborate scheme for taking the belongings of one Asian and two white teenage boys, in which the blacks play good cop/bad cop (this is previewed at the very start of the film with an earlier theft from two different boys). First they ask the time. When one of the victims checks the time on his mobile phone they claim it looks like the one that was stolen from a brother of one of them. The three boys have to come along to verify this with the brother. At one point the eight have to flee from a gang of adults, and one black and one white boy together get separated from the other six. By phone they find out the location of the others and reunite. Then after some moving around, one boy of the gang wants to quit; the gang leader responds by beating him up and kicking him. The four remaining gang members proceed with the three boys.
They end up in a deserted place where the four force the three to participate in a running contest, with one of the three against one of the four, where the group of the winner gets all valuables of all the boys. The two walk along a curved path to the starting point from where they have to run back to the others. The three lose due to a trick of the four: the boy from the group of three thought they had to run along the path, but the other boy ran straight. The three are now free to go. They have no phone to contact their parents and no money for the tram, so they travel without a ticket; they do not explain this to the conductor, and get fined and scolded by him for fare evasion.
Later the father of one of the victims (of a different unseen theft) confronts a gang member, but this is disapproved of by a female bystander who interprets this as racist.
Play was generally acclaimed by critics. The film holds an 81/100 average on Metacritic. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes also reports 80% approval with an average rating of 7/10, based on 15 reviews.
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