Overview
Detectives and best friends Andreas and Simon lead vastly different lives; Andreas has settled down with his beautiful wife and son; while Simon, recently divorced, spends most of his waking hours getting drunk at the local strip club. But all that changes when the two of them are called out to a domestic dispute between a junkie couple, caught in a vicious cycle of violence and drugs. It all looks very routine – until Andreas finds the couple's infant son, crying in a closet. The usually collected policeman finds himself confronted with his own powerlessness and is shaken to his core. As Andreas slowly loses his grip on justice, it suddenly becomes up to the unruly Simon to restore the balance between right and wrong.
Andreas appears to be living a dream life. He lives in the kind of Scandinavian home on the waterfront that has probably been showcased in various design magazines; his wife Anna is almost as good looking as he is himself; and they have just had a little baby boy Alexander to make their idyllic little life complete.
But Andreas is a cop, and in his work he has to deal with the underbelly of Danish suburbia. And his partner Simon is his opposite – not a ruggedly handsome family man but a lone alcoholic who prefers to spend his free time at the local strip club.
Andreas in his work has to deal with a drug-addicted couple who also have a little baby that they are completely neglecting, and he struggles to keep a professional distance. When disaster then strikes at home, he thinks he may have found a win-win for all…
The cast actually do a pretty good job but the script is just unsalvagable. The core story and the supposed twists and surprises are terribly contrived and not nearly credible enough to keep the viewer’s interest. It is quite atmospheric, but lacks subtlety and it fails to work as a thriller or mystery as much as it fails as a drama dealing with the struggles of bereavement. You simply won’t buy the story.
A Second Chance (original title: En Chance Til), whilst pretty watchable, is in the end A Danish Disappointment.
5/10
