Mads Mikkelsen is most notably known as a villain. Whether you recognize him more as the man opposing James Bond in Casino Royale or as Hannibal Lecter on NBC’s hit show Lecter, he’s very adept at playing the bad guy. But, in the most poignant performance of his career and one that earned him praise across the globe, Mikkelsen stars as Lucas, a kind and gentle daycare employee falsely accused of molesting one of his students in the Danish film and Academy Award-nominated foreign language film The Hunt. I struggle with movies that are subtitled. My philosophy often is if I can view a good movie in English or one that is in another language that will force me to spend a couple of hours reading while also trying to pay attention to the visuals on the screen, why wouldn’t I pick the movie in my native language? Unless a movie (or one of its leads) is nominated for an Academy Award (Amour, Maria Full of Grace), is recommended by a friend (The Lunchbox), or doesn’t have an English substitute (North Face), I’m probably not going to give it a chance. It’s not because I think that those movies will be bad. Like everyone, I have a job and many other hobbies, and, frankly, time is limited. However, when a foreign language film does breakthrough, and it is one that I think is well made, it is a film that I am likely to remember for a long, long time, if not for the rest of my life. This was certainly the case with The  Lunchbox and North Face and is also the case with The Hunt.
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