REVIEW: ‘An Honest Life’ Is Terribly Dishonest About Its Own Politics

Netflix-original Swedish-language thriller, An Honest Life (Ett ärligt liv), is a terribly severe, unfun “tear down the system” movie that seems to wish you wouldn’t, actually. Simon (Simon Lööf), a law student without wealthy parents, moves in with uber-wealthy classmates who treat him like a servant. When he has a chance encounter with Max (Nora Rios), Simon falls in with her ring of anarchist burglars in a mess of a movie that neither scintillates nor makes a political point.

The movie opens in media res, with Simon at a watch shop, a woman dropping to the floor from a seizure, and a burner phone ringing to tell him to take the watches, because this is his test. It takes an hour before it’s clear what he’s being tested for, and by the time you find out, it hardly feels worth it.

The next thing that happens is that Simon gets caught up in a violent protest while walking home. Police mistake him for a rioter, he runs, they chase, and when he’s nearly free, he sees the cops about to attack masked vandals and shouts to warn them.

An Honest Life seems not to understand its own politics.

Apparently, this warning is enough to convince those vandals, ultimately Max and her group, that Simon has some potential to become one of them. This, even though he is clearly a stoic, scared kid who has expressed no real political or moral beliefs throughout the movie, besides that rich people are obnoxious and attacking people with violence makes him uncomfortable.

There is no reason to believe that Simon is a fully-formed character. His only defining trait is that he wanted to be a writer, not a lawyer, but he never had anything exciting enough happen to him, so he gave up on writing outside of his personal diary, which is used occasionally as a narrative device for Simon to give voiceover. He’s not insightful or interesting; he’s just telling things as they are.

Max and her crew, on the other hand, have no clear motivations besides vague family trauma and a gripe against the rich. Sure, those are sympathetic descriptors, but An Honest Life does everything it can to strip them of that sympathy. They’re mean, manipulative, and constantly lying to Simon. There’s nothing ultimately likable about them, which unfortunately, actually seems to be the point.

The visuals and tone of An Honest Life are so dark and disinteresting.

An Honest Life clearly hates leftists more than it hates the rich people they’re revolting against. The crummy rich roommates turn out to be more sympathetic than the people Simon falls in with. It’s an offensive caricature of protest and leftism. And yet, the movie still tries to get you to buy into a star-crossed romance between Max and Simon. It’s more manipulative than the criminals depicted in An Honest Life.

To make matters worse, the tone and visuals of the movie match its disinterest. Simon always looks and sounds like he’s miserable, probably because he is. But it’s deeply uninteresting to watch. The movie is ostensibly a crime thriller, yet none of the crimes are fun to watch. There’s no energy anywhere in this movie. And like most Netflix thrillers caked in severity, An Honest Life is visually dark and uninteresting to look at.

An Honest Life is not honest with itself about its own politics. It’s an anti-leftist tome masquerading inside a trite anti-rich misfire. It’s not fun to watch in its own right, but the fact that none of its characters are redeemable, despite the movie’s intentions, makes this a must-skip.

An Honest Life is streaming now on Netflix.