Ulrik (Stellan Skarsgard) has served a 12-year sentence for murdering a man and now is being released from prison. A friendly guard warns him not to look back but just to move forward. But that's a hard thing to do since he owes his boss Jensen (Bjorn Floberg) for payments to his ex-wife and son while he was gone. To give us an idea what this man is like, we see a woman accidentally back into his car with hers and Jensen picks her up and throws her in a dumpster. And yet in his first meeting with Ulrik, he reminds him that he takes care of his people. Just to prove it, his controlling and meticulous boss gets him a room in a desolate place run by an angry landlady (Jorunn Kyellsby) and gets him a job as a mechanic in a garage. But there is a catch to all these kindnesses. Jensen insists that Ulrik kill the snitch that put him in prison.

It seems that everything is working together to help this convict truly achieve a new life and a second start. Although his ex-wife (Kjersti Holmen) gives Ulrik a quickie for old time's sake, she warns him to stay away from his estranged son (Jan Gunnar Roise), an engineer with a pregnant wife (Julia Bache Wiig). But feeling guilty about not communicating with the boy, he goes to see him anyway and is thrilled about his early success in life. Back at the garage, Ulrik is told by the owner to stay away from the clerk (Jannike Kruse). He intervenes when her ex-husband arrives and starts beating her up. After he saves her, she invites him to dinner and they have sex. Another night, they go dancing. His landlady, who has been cooking Ulrik delicious dinners in exchange for sex, guesses that he is seeing another woman. Meanwhile, Jensen is getting impatient with the man who now seems to not have the stomach for killing.

A Somewhat Gentle Man is the sixth feature film by Hans Petter Moland, whose character-driven dramas Aberdeen (2000) and The Beautiful Country (2004) impressed us with his ability to convey the emotions that lead us to both love and destructiveness. This is Moland's third collaboration with Stellan Skarsgard, and it pays off handsomely. The actor gives a nuanced performance of an ex-con trying to make a fresh start as all the new people in his life throw up roadblocks. In one of the film's most remarkable scenes, Ulrik from his car witnesses his son's moment of happiness on the street; he empathizes with him so deeply that feels united with his joy in a miraculous way. In a quirky summary of this film that blends comedy and serious drama, Molander says: "It is a film about our painful shortcomings, a tribute to less than perfect sex, and a worldwide campaign against the people of petty exactness that rule the world."