This film will open commercially in the United States on 1 April 2011.
Bullies exist in all places, among all groups of people and among all ages. The way you deal with them can help define your character. I’m not sure why, but the way many people encourage children to confront bullies is different to how we expect adults to do so. I think many would agree that children should stand up for themselves, while the advice we’d likely give an adult would be to ignore and walk away. What does this difference point to? I suppose it’s that a young bully, still in his formative year, has lesson to learn and can change their ways, whereas a grown man is probably unlikely to take anything from the experience. More than likely you might take a beating.
Early in Susanne Bier’s In a Better World (known in Danish as Haevnen, which means ‘revenge’) a young boy named Christian exacts a brutal punishment on a school bully. Christian has recently returned from England to Denmark with his father (Ulrich Thomsen) after the death of his mother. He’s the new kid in school and on the first day he witnesses another boy, a Swede named Elias, on the receiving end of several nasty taunts and jibes from Sofus and his cronies. By the end of the school day, Christian will have taken a basketball to the face courtesy of Sofus. The next day he gets the drop on Sofus, who has Elias cornered alone in a bathroom. Christian goes to work on him with a bicycle pump and then threatens him with a knife to the throat.
