An Honest Life 2025 Movie Review
Russian lit nerds will spot it right away: Raskolnikov 2.0 has arrived, and this time he’s Swedish. In the coming-of-age thriller An Honest Life, Netflix drops us into Lund University, Sweden, where yet another law student decides that moral obligations are for losers, and chasing chaos with a hot anarchist instead is a better use of his tuition. Like Dostoevsky’s brooding antihero, Simon starts to believe he’s above boring lives and boring laws, until rebellion stops being romantic and starts getting blood on his hands. Borrowing Godard and Truffaut’s favorite ingredients—politically disillusioned youth, ideological angst, and a taste for self-destruction—An Honest Life turns political romance into something far moodier and messier, with just enough noir to keep the guilt sexy.
Simon, a bright student from a modest background, lands a spot at Lund University, trading his dream of being a writer for the safer path of law. But his arrival takes a chaotic turn when he’s caught in the middle of a violent political protest, too burdened by luggage to outrun the riot police. While ducking for cover, he spots a group looting a nearby store and instinctively tips them off about an approaching officer. The cop catches him and beats him down until one of the robbers helps him to knock the cop out. Simon then goes on to settle in his new apartment with two ridiculously rich students, Ludwig and Victor. He refuses to live in a shabby dorm like the other students, convinced that burning through most of his monthly allowance is a fair price for comfort. But that comfort quickly unravels. Ludwig, his pretentious landlord, begins to manipulate him into playing footman and valet at every dinner party. Between that, the lectures he couldn’t care less about, and a draining part-time job as a waiter, Simon slips into a quietly miserable, Kafkaesque state of mind. The only friend he makes at the university, Fredde, is passionate about studying law, and Simon couldn’t care less about him and his conversations. But somewhere between exhaustion and escape, Simon finds her, the masked stranger who once saved him from a beating. Max, the sweet, sharp-eyed anarchist, doesn’t have to do much; her presence alone feels like a revolution to him. For Simon, worn down by routine and hungry for meaning, falling for her isn’t a choice; it’s the first thing that’s felt real to him in a long time.
Max is like a magnet, and Simon doesn’t stand a chance to resist her pull. She pulls him in every direction, making sure he stays orbiting her world. And for a boy from a small town, who’s barely had a taste of normal student life, Max feels like everything he’s ever wanted: freedom, chaos, and purpose, all wrapped in one irresistible woman. When he injures himself while cliff jumping, Max takes him to Charles’ house—a ramshackle old bungalow where she currently lives. Charles, a retired political science professor, is a self-proclaimed anarchist who swears by radical honesty. Over the years, he’s gathered a small cult of young followers who hang onto his every word. But in truth, Charles is less of a visionary and more of an enabler, someone who gives intellectual cover to their reckless behavior. The group believes that stealing is simply reclaiming what was always theirs, and they often leave behind quotes from revolutionary poets at the scenes of their thefts.
Simon falls deep into the world of his new friends: Max, her sister Dinah, Gustaf, and Robin. He steals a bunch of luxury watches from a showroom, and the thrill makes him feel untouchable. When Max asks him to move into Charles’ place with the gang, he doesn’t think twice. He demands his deposit back from Ludwig, who isn’t thrilled about losing his obedient little helper. Ludwig tells him to show up for one more of his soirees if he wants the money. But at the party, Simon catches Max prostituting for Ludwig, and suddenly, the entire fantasy starts to rot. His new identity, this wild reinvention of himself, was all tied to Max, and now he sees the cracks. Charles had warned him about this, about Max and the last guy who got too close and then disappeared for good. Simon confronts her, and she tells him she needed access to Ludwig’s parents’ house. Another heist. Another plan. And even though it breaks something in him, he says yes. Because Max still has that grip on him.
But things go south. There’s someone inside the house: Joyce, the housekeeper. Robin shoots her in a panic. When Simon and Max find her bleeding on the floor, Joyce recognizes Simon. She’s been to his place before. They take off with two stolen cars and enough loot to finally cut ties with Charles. But when Charles objects, Robin punches him in the face, and just like that, they’re all out. The ideology, the loyalty, all of it gone. Then Max leaves. She just drops Simon, telling him the only way to stay safe is to pretend he never knew them. He begs and protests, but it’s over. He’s left behind with nothing but the weight of everything they did. So he goes back to university—pretending, lying, carrying the wreckage alone.
Unable to focus on the law course he never cared about in the first place, Simon finds himself back at Charles’ door, desperate and wired. He demands Max’s address, practically threatening the old man, but Charles shrugs—he doesn’t know where Max is. All he has is the address of Henrik, the guy Max was involved with before Simon. So Simon hunts it down, still clinging to something he can’t name. He ends up at Henrik’s apartment, where a tired-looking roommate lets him in. Henrik vanished, she says, right after he talked about moving in with Max. He just disappeared. But he left something behind—a library receipt. He told her to give it to anyone who came looking for him, as long as they knew someone named Charles. Simon gets the receipt, and it leads him to a book. Victor Serge’s “Memoirs of a Revolutionary.” Inside the book, Simon finds a folded diary page. Written in Henrik’s handwriting are the real names and contact numbers of Max and the rest of the group. Simon now has an advantage over the people who just yeeted on him after making him a full-time criminal.
Simon writes down everything—every detail about Max, the gang, the thefts, and the lies—in a diary. He doesn’t dramatize it; he just lays it all out, like he’s unloading something that’s been eating away at him. Then he hides the diary in his room, tucked behind his bookshelf. Quietly, he tells his sister that if any tragedy befalls upon him then she should keep his Joyce and Faulkner collection. Max reaches out to him again, giving him the address of a hotel room. But once again, he is nothing more than a tool for them to use. Max comes to see him, sleeps with him, and as soon as she’s done, Gustav and Robin come through the balcony to rob a capital investor called Maria Conti, who’s living in the same hotel. Once again, Robin loses his calm and shoots the hotel manager. Max ties Conti up and puts her in a bathtub, leaving another anarchist message behind her. But when Robin tries to shoot Conti, Simon loses it and gets in a tussle with him, resulting in the gun accidentally firing straight into Gustav’s stomach.
In An Honest Life’s ending, they flee the scene in silence, the tension thick between them. On the highway, they get pulled over by a cop. Robin, still twitchy from the shooting, reaches for his gun, but before he can do anything reckless, Simon punches him across the face and blinds the cops with pepper spray. It’s messy and chaotic, but it works. They escape. Robin storms off, leaving Simon and Max to handle the rest. They switch plates, change clothes, and disappear into the blur. But somewhere along the road, Simon asks Max to stop. He is done. He says he knows everything now—who they are, what they have done, and what it cost. And if Max ever tries to pull him into another one of her schemes, he will make sure she faces the consequences. He is not afraid anymore. Like Charles, he believes in radical honesty now, not as an ideology but as a way to live. No more hiding, no more pretending. He does not want the thrill or the chaos. He chooses honesty, even if it hurts, because for the first time, it feels like freedom.
