Review of 'The Hundred Year Old Man Who Jumped Out a Window and Disappeared'

As a young person, I would highly recommend this film, even with its unlikely title ‘The 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared’.

Although the film is mostly in Swedish I didn’t feel it took anything away from my overall viewing experience.  A Swedish film, adapted from the bestseller of the same name by Jonas Jonasson, is directed by Swedish filmmaker and actor/comedian Felix Herngren.

The film follows the capers of Allan Karlsson (played by Robert Gustafsson as all the adult ages who gives an excellent performance here) , an unlikely hero who decides at age 100 to go out and experience life, an action that for the first time, is of his own volition.  Over the course of the film we follow Allan as he solicits the help of a petrol station owner, a farmer, and a local businessman, each helping him escape from a biker gang who are seeking him to recover a suitcase containing 50 million dollars. Recovering a suitcase is a plot device that has been done numerous times before, in the likes of Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ or the Coen Brothers ‘No Country for Old Men’, but while both of those films took a very dark and serious approach to it, ‘The 100 Year Old Man’ does the opposite, and is much more of a black comedy.

The performances in the film are mostly excellent, and  Robert Gustafsson,  known as the funniest man in Sweden, has impeccable comic timing.  He manages to pull off Allan’s character all the way through his life, portraying his feelings as time goes on.

Alan Ford portrays the mob boss ‘Pim’, in a role virtually identical to his one in ‘Snatch’, and even though as a villain he is very one dimensional, he doesn’t need to be anything more than that, and at many points is a comedic highlight of the film. Fans of the book will realise that Pim is a new character created for the film, but will not be disappointed as this character adds to the film, which is quite a  faithful adaptation.

The film has been a massive success worldwide, earning roughly $50 million at the box office, making it the highest grossing Swedish film of all time, an accolade it certainly deserves, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared was a delightful adventure through the life of a man, that never ceases to make you laugh. It has been called the Swedish ‘Forrest Gump’, however I think this does the film a great disservice, as it was much more enjoyable than Forrest Gump.