What I liked was how Greengrass doesn't flinch and puts everything on the table, not resorting to easy, placating answers like the guy was just insane. Breivik was calculated and meticulous in his planning and execution and wanted to make a point. It's too simple to see it as a mental health breakdown alone. Although the film does push that perspective.
Seemed to me part of what it was saying is those kind of wave away opinions are not productive for society as it tries to understand why Breivik happened and it's better to confront the reality head on. The film explores these events in the same clear eyed way from the perspective of attacker and victims where that day becomes something that they were all personally involved in. The boy's final testimonial drives that.
What I mean is that the interest is in dismantling and viewing the events on a human level where once you take all the politics, ideology and indoctrination away, he callously murdered 77 people, most of them children, and maimed and damaged mentally and physically lots of others ... Greengrass seems to land on the idea that to do that to other people on that basic human level is the worst thing about it all, not because it's in the name of neo-nazism or fascism, but because they're just other people and you have no right to do this in any context. At the same time the film obviously gets across how abhorrent the attacks were and soundly dismantles Breivik presenting him, rightly, as entirely hollow.
)but I think that could have been a decent reboot if optioned.
