After Christoffer's father dies, he is torn between his mother's demands and sense of familial duty and his relatively simple life with his wife. At stake are the steel mill his father built up but which is now near bankruptcy and his marriage.
The second in a trio of films Per Fly is making about modern society's three classes, The Inheritance casts a rare sensitive look at the travails of the well-to-do (The Bench was his first feature, about the working class). Ulrich Thomsen does a superb job of portraying a man suddenly weighted with his father's legacy, not to mention the jobs of 900 men. Lisa Werlinder as his wife, Maria, and Ghita Nørby as his mother, Annelise, both do good jobs of the women pulling Christoffer in opposite directions. The cast is in service to a strong script by Fly, Kim Leona, Mogens Rukov and Dorte Høgh, telling the above story but also showing the tough choices business demands of people and the subtle, seductive attraction of entrepreneurship. It's a sign of sophistication that no one in the film is without fault, and yet all are sympathetic.