Slick, unsettling Danish law-enforcement thriller “Shorta” — or as it’s been generically retitled in the United States, “Enforcement” — opens with a familiar “I can’t breathe” moment as a team of police scramble to restrain a 19-year-old Muslim man, suggesting that what happened to Eric Garner in Staten Island, and to George Floyd in Minneapolis, is hardly an America-specific problem.
Like those men, Talib Ben Hassi dies from complications of the police chokehold, and as in those cases, the community rises up against the establishment that was sworn to protect it.In other words, “Shorta” begins where films such as “Do the Right Thing” and “Les Misérables” abruptly stopped.
That’s an awfully ambitious (if somewhat foolhardy) setup for helmers Anders Ølholm and Frederik Louis Hviid to construct their debut feature — a thriller that’s both a relentless adrenaline rush and a social-issue Rorschach test for all who watch it.
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