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film review
Johanna Schneller
Special to The Globe and Mail

This article was published more than 6 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

Joel Kinnaman and Tom Holland star in Edge of Winter.

"You think I'm a lousy father?" Elliot (Joel Kinnaman) asks his sons near the end of this U.S./Canadian drama. "Say it. Say it!"

I'll say it: He stinks.

Estranged from Bradley, 15 (Tom Holland), and Caleb, 12 (Percy Hynes White), he's taken them on a "fun" trip up north to try to bond. (It was shot near Sudbury.) Things are awkward. Then they get bad: car accident, snowstorm, isolated hunting cabin. Elliot learns his ex is moving the kids to London, and snaps. (You'll know when that happens, because Kinnaman deploys his Madness Eyes, and keeps them on for the duration.) Bradley realizes Elliot intends to hold them prisoner, and schemes to escape.

Kinnaman, a Swede, is good in small doses – say, as Mireille Enos's sidekick in the TV series The Killing – but he's no leading man. He gives us zero insight into Elliot, so he never makes us care about him. This film will be remembered (if at all) as one of the things Holland did before he was Spider-Man.

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