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I love this movie so much

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Based on real cases from Gothenburg, the director has created an almost documentary-looking study of a youth gangs of black immigrant children who exclude younger white children with all sorts of tricks and "games". The younger children do not fight back and - perfectly educated politically - only symbolically set signs that they want to escape from the subtle captivity of the gang. Of course, adults do not help. After all, you do not want to be a "racist" ..The film creates an oppressive mood through the static wide-angle camera with simultaneous subtle violence. Unwittingly, attitudes, macho, lack of imagination and threats of violence are also shown against adults who threaten politically correct with the police, what the gang kids (10-15 years) smile only tired.Here, the original Swedish openness and Christian expectation developed over centuries meet totally disintegrated immigrant children who are unlikely to be integrated in the next three generations and, as Kant would say, work only with slyness, not reason: love and Being nice means being a weakling - just like the police in Sweden. Because authority means in the context of the gang: violence. So you know it from his tradition.If Östlund's current big movie "the Square" is the grand exposure and dismantling of politically correct comfort, one can see the same direction in "Play", only from the perspective of the street: what is going wrong in a society of total anti-discrimination, in which is only abstracted without examining the facts? The end is unbelievably apt and represents the verdict on the concrete facts: A reverse racism breaks down, destroys society and the quality of culture. The last music scenes of the film leave the audience dejected ...Sweden has a new Ingmar Bergman who can display the individual human relationship at the same time oppressive from a political point of view.

A visually interesting and unusual movie. It is centered around rather a chilling story of bullying that is built very slowly thus making it thrilling and terrifying, since we are conditioned to expect some bloody climax; yet the horror happens only in the subtle way of exposing the violence which is in conforming. The main story is cut several times by visuals of a parallel yet empty story that pretends to add to meaning. Again both stories are expected {we are conditioned to expect} to join in some great climax yet it does happen just in quite a meaningless way. The movie is full of visual fluff that is there to amplify any interpretation one can see. Some parts are missing, again to punish expectations. Like when the boy gets to the treetop and an interesting discussion develops. All is cut: somehow he is back down, yet why? To conform with his comrades who had let him down before? Conforming or conditioning that makes people insensitive to what is and so react predictably is also exposed in reactions of shopkeeper, passengers, disturbed ladies at the end. Street-smarts count on predictability of petty minds; bullying may continue. Should have been shorter.

The film shows a group of bullies and their relationship with their victims, and how the group works during different circumstances. The movie is based on actual events in Gothenburg, where kids used a scheme wherein they accused their targets of having stolen mobile phones. Through coercion and psychological violence they then make the victims to hand over the cell phone to get out of the uncomfortable situation that arises. During the movie, the power relationship between the groups, the bullies and the victims, often changes and the bullies ask their victims for help, which they also get, as the victims play along in the social setup that has been created. The interactions with adults that the groups have are unsettling. The adults often refuse to interfere, perhaps due to insecurity about where the line goes, or whether they are assumed to interfere. Some adults also seem to downplay what is happening in front of them, almost acting as if children cannot abuse other children, and what they witness is child's play.Ultimately, the adults and the children seem to be from different worlds altogether, worlds that are not meant to meet.The end has several interesting twists. One of them is when, several months later, one parent of the robbed children finds one of the perpetrators, and decides to confront him. This is done in a similar bully-like way as the bullies were using in the first place. During the movie I felt very angry and upset, and I was picturing several ways I would deal with the bullies. But this last scene shows the futility of acting in such short-sighted ways; the reasons for acting like bullies are reinforced as he views himself even more of an outsider, and the abusive parents are later confronted by onlookers.Trying to explain their frustration and the situation to the confronting onlookers, I feel as if the parents are not only talking for themselves, but also for my own viewpoints.The absurdity of using bullying to stop bullying is exposed, and I laugh at my own simple and reductionist reactions I had just a few minutes ago. This was an great movie, one of the best, most developed depictions of human behavior, domination and submission in social interaction. If I ever become a parent, I would definitely show this movie to my children as they are about to enter school, to discuss how to deal with bullies and to talk about how bullying arises.

Black boys take mobile phones away from younger white boys. It doesn't happen through verbal threat or violence. Most of the job is performed through body language and way of speaking. The blacks know if functions.This has meant a debate about a racist script and a racist film. That's of course not what director Ruben Östlund is up to. He very clearly points out how subtle things, like the way you look at somebody, gives you power. That also depends on the social context, the environment and so on, but it is there. It's certainly not as simple as it's put in billions of stupid action movies.Long takes, brilliant acting by young amateurs. One objection is however the almost parodic ignorance from the grown-up world, an ignorance which is not subtle at all. Anyway, this should be the most important Swedish film of 2011.