The problem is modern cinema is with packaging and promotion, more than with the films being released. Thats my opinion. When it was the darker days of the video shop era and I among millions of others, was helping people with renting a cornocopia of cinematic treats. Often spoken of word of mouth and adore or bored those who were watching. Films like THE MIDDLE MAN from director Bent Hamer would have succeeded really well in these enviroments. There we had time to explain the films various high points, knowing a customer, we could suggets why they would love it and maybe also why they should part with the £2.50 to rent it. Its quirky, blackly comic and yet thrillingly abstract story of Frank Farrelli (Pål Sverre Hagen) taking a dead end job as a ‘middle man’ in ice cold hell town of Karmack in the United States. This is a nice branding for a shit job. He has to tell peoples relatives about horrid deaths, misfortune in accidents and all that which no one would want to have told to them by an ashen faced slacker. This would have seemed like an easy sell back then. Now its harder and the ad people trying there darndist to attach it to popular vehicles, have had to lump it in to things as broad as the likes of the Coens (which yes it has a few passing notes of) and the Sopranos (just no…)

Now the esteemed (sic) Guardian, didnt like it. For a multitude of film school studies reject reasons I might add. I wont speak ill of others but those writing on the right and left of the newspaper political devide, do love the sound of their own voice and also to hate what they dont understand because it is either, not in vouge or challenges their idoicy. THE MIDDLE MAN is a better film than its neighsayers would admit.  What resonants so vividly with me and hopefully you, is that THE MIDDLE MAN is more than the abstraction it presents. Its a state of the world film. Imagine GROSSE POINTE BLANK but with a Scandi sense of its self. A Bergman with sardonic wit maybe. The cast all resonant this feeling with gusto. Paul Gross (yes that guy from DUE SOUTH) is a kind of statue of authority but with a clever glint that says ‘this is the way it is, you just might not have seen it yet!’. The rationale of employing a person to break news because ‘The community is in a depression so deep that it needs professionally communicated bad news.’ is so on tone for today but like most films of this nature, it will take 20 years for it to be appreciated…