Directed by Alain Darborg, and starring Nana Blondell and Anastasios Soulis, Punto Rojo is a very good sample of what Scandinavian cinema can bring to the Big Screen, when there is a nice budget behind it. After all, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland are global powers in producing crime and suspense literature, from which we have seen a glimpse with Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy and his iconic characters Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. .
Now, if in the midst of all the murders, suspicions, and northern lights, you are still wondering what is going on at the end of this film, do not worry. It is time for Red Dot: Explained.
1 | Why is this movie called Red Dot?
It is a nice reference to a specific scene of the movie, where the main characters are terrified to see someone is pointing them with a red dot sight, in the spot where they were camping to see the northern lights.
2 | Where and when do the events of Red Dot take place?
Chronologically, the film begins with David Daftander (Soulis) graduating as a Civil Engineer, the same day he proposed to Nadja (Blondell) and they plan to move to Stockholm .
A year and a half later, marital problems between David and Nadja forced them to go on an excursion to Björndalen, (Bear Valley). Taking into account that the northern lights could be seen on that site, we can narrow down the search to two Swedish provinces: Norrbotten and Lappland. Taking into account that there are no masks, or biosecurity protocols, we could well place Nadja and David’s excursion in 2019, and David’s graduation in 2017.
3 | What happened the day David proposed to Nadja?
After that weird marriage proposal in the toilette, David was driving his car, but suddenly Nadja was trying to take his pants off. David, obviously excited, tried to help her, but he took his eyes off the road and ended up running over Olof, Tomas and Mona’s son.
4 | Why didn’t David and Nadja help the boy and run away?
Although Nadja tried to convince David to stop and call the police for help, David was convinced that it would ruin the life that was just beginning with his graduation as a Civil Engineer, and convinced her that he would turn himself in later.
And finally he was putting it off, until finally marriage, work and life, ended up convincing him that it was useless to waste his life. The funny thing is that neither Nadja nor David seemed to be moved, or worried, much less felt guilty, because once the accident happened, they dedicated themselves to following their lives as if it had never happened.
5 | Who killed Boris, David and Nadja’s dog?
Although the racist brothers, Jarmo and Rolle, were the main suspects, since they had a confrontation with David and Nadja for hitting the truck, and then in retaliation, having scratched their vehicle with racist nicknames, the truth is that those who assassinated Boris were Tomas, Mona and their pal Einar.
6 | What was Tomas’s plan?
The plan was basically to make Nadja and David pay for the death of Olof. He moved near them, became their friend, and then when the occasion was opportune, he set them up, sending them to Björndalen, where the idea they had was to kill them. .
Of course, Tomas was very sure that he did not want to kill them quickly, they wanted to make them suffer.
7 | What went wrong with Tomas’s plan?
Tomas thought it would be easy to locate Nadja and David because they did not know the area, however they were able to escape and hide thanks to the snowstorm that covered the area. The fact that the racist brothers were in the area didn’t help either, because Nadja and David kept hiding from them, thinking they were responsible. They even killed Rolle, and burned Jarmo.
8 | What does the end of Punto Rojo mean?
In the end, Nadja and David get trapped in Einar’s house, and Tomas eventually plans for David to wound Nadja in the belly. However Einar could not bear the sadism of Tomas and stopped him. Jarmo ended up complicating the matter even more. In the end Jarmo and Einar died in that house.
Nadja and David managed to escape, but David was in such bad shape that he gave Nadja the option to flee. David was willing to die at the hands of Tomas, but Nadja returned carrying Rolle’s gun. What she was not expecting was that Mona, Tomas’s wife, was also around with a gun, so he ended up with a shot to the head.
In the end, with Nadja’s corpse next to David, Tomas saw that it was no longer necessary to murder David. At that point he had already lost everything.
9 | What is the message of the movie?
We must take responsibility for our actions. There is a temptation to believe that we can get away with what we do, but just as David ended up paying handsomely for the damage he did, by trying to escape responsibility, the same can happen to us.
Questions? Annotations? More doubts? The comments section is open just below this post so feel free to use it. See you in the next installment of Ending Explained here at El Sabanero X.
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