School for bad behaviour

A tough, fighting teenager, chucked out of his local school because he's "pure evil", lands up in a select Swedish public school where the masters leave the prefects to maintain the pecking order and dispense summary justice. The idea is to give pupils a taste of the competitive nature of adult life where the strong rule the weak.

The boy, well played by Andreas Wilson, is shocked by the bully-boy nature of the regime and adopts a Gandhi-like stance in an attempt to beat it. But will he crack under the strain?

Mikael Hafstrom's film, Sweden's entry for the Foreign Film Oscar, is acted with fearsome efficiency, but is too remorseless to be wholly effective. It paints the school in such dark colours that Scandinavia's liberal heritage is totally blanked out.

As a metaphor for a hostile outside world, however, it does have some force, and the performances, particularly from the few women, including Marie Richardson as the boy's mother, are excellent.

Evil (Ondskan)
Cert: cert15