Standard (but it’s a high standard) Scandinavian police procedural, reminiscent of the original WALLANDER tv series (the one from Sweden, not the Kenneth Branagh depressive), with a twist in plot & character that plays more like WALLANDER meets TOUCH OF EVIL/’58, the Orson Welles noir classic about a dirty chief of police who won’t let evidentiary niceties keep him from solving the case & getting his man. An impressive writing/directing debut for Erik Skjoldbjærg who finds fresh meteorological spins on shopworn story beats when mid-forties Swedish homicide specialist Stellan Skarsgård arrives in Norway during the Midnight Sun season to work on the case of a murdered teenage girl. Sleep depravation vies with a nasty killing, a meticulously cleaned corpse, uncongenial local colleagues and hard to crack suspects/witnesses, to drive Skarsgård into delusions & a mental breakdown. Made worse by a fatal error which has him covering up for himself (and incidentally for the likely killer) with falsified prime and planted evidence. Compelling stuff, much aided by Skjoldbjærg’s way of tying action to landscape, and unprincipled behavior to exhaustion. Ending with the sort of resigned ethics Roman Polanski found in CHINATOWN.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Showing impressive range, leading man Stellan Skarsgård paved the way for Al Pacino when Christopher Nolan jumped to the A-list in his INSOMNIA/’02 redo while Hans Petter Moland got Liam Neeson to remake KRAFTIDIOTEN/’14, his bloody revenge comedy with Skarsgård, as COLD PURSUIT/’19.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: From silent days to now, you could always establish the bad guy by having him kick a defenseless dog. Here, in a shocking show of confident character layering, Skjoldbjærg gets away with having Skarsgård shoot one!
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