Category: Review

Chicks with Sticks

  By

★★
“Two minute penalty, unnecessary cliches.”

Printed directly from the finest template of sports movie tropes, this is less a script than a bullet list of plot points you’ve seen a thousand times before. Struggling single mom (check) Paula Taymore (Gilsig) had to give up a promising ice hockey career to take care of her son (check). A bar argument leads to a challenge match against a local men’s team (check). Paula has to assemble a women’s side (check), from a ragtag group (check), including an ex-convict (check), sassy Black girl (check) and a witch (check). Can she overcome adversity and local prejudice (check), find love with hunky single dad Steve Cooper (Priestley, and check) and triumph in the big game? (BIG BOLD CHECK, LARGE FONT).

It’s not just the storyline that comes out like a prepackaged frozen dinner, the style and approach to the content is equally safe, competent and, ultimately, bland. That means training montages, a soundtrack of bland country and pseudo-inspirational pop/rock, and attempts to yank on audience’s emotional heartstrings which could not be more blatantly obvious. Yet there are reasons these things have become overused stereotypes: it’s because they are effective. You may know, with absolute certainty, the women’s team are going to fight back after falling 4-1 down. This doesn’t make it any less heartwarming when it happens, and this is effective enough as undemanding cinematic comfort food. It’s the kind of movie you curl up on the couch with, clutching a cup of hot chocolate, some Sunday afternoon.

What’s odd is that there are moments where it does have the opportunity to break away from the obvious. For example, there’s a plot thread where one of the women absconds with the hard-raised team funds. However, this is discarded almost as soon as it has begun, with no actual resolution. In its place suddenly appears, out of nowhere, the fact that the goalkeeper is throwing the game for gambling purposes. Still, nothing a few stern words from Paula can’t sort out, amIrite? There’s no effort at all put in on the side of their opponents, who might as well be a pack of skating Neanderthals. Their idea of wit is putting a camera in the women’s locker-room, an element that has not aged well, to put it mildly.

The performances are likely better than the material deserves. Kidder, as Paula’s mom, manages to be heartfelt without coming over as insincere or sacchariney, and Gilsig has her moments, mostly when struggling to balance her family responsibilities with her own hopes and goals. Of the supporting cast, Marquis comes off best, making a strong impression as acidic goth Felicity Carelli, though singer Michie Mee seems thoroughly out of place. Whoever thought it made sense to have her rap the Canadian national anthem, probably has found themselves on an RCMP watch-list. You may not need to know anything about hockey to watch this. However, you won’t learn anything about it either.

Dir: Kari Skogland
Star: Jessalyn Gilsig, Margot Kidder, Jason Priestley, Juliette Marquis
a.k.a. Hockey Mom or Anyone’s Game

Gehenna: Naked Aggression, by Patrick Kindlon and Marco Ferrari

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆½

“What I need is stories where men get kicked in the chest. Stories where guns only run out of ammo for dramatic effect. I need pulp. I need exploitation. I need fun.”  I used to read a lot of comics, before moving to America. As in, most weekends involved a trip to Forbidden Planet, Gosh!, or Mega City Comics, coming home with a carrier bag of new issues. Then there were the trips to Paris… But I just kinda stopped – no particular reason – when I emigrated. There is still a large cardboard box, unopened from the move 25 years ago, in our boxroom. Some are probably worth a bit, e.g. the first issue of Hellblazer. But reading the first issue of Gehenna makes me want to restart. Well, if space, time, money and aging eyesight weren’t issues, anyway.

“This book is equally for the diehard comic reader and someone who hasn’t read sequential art since Garfield,” according to co-creator Kindlon. I’m certainly closer to the latter category, but certainly found it accessible, once I got into the comic-book rhythm again. It’s different from word-based literature, and even from cinema, where the pace is dictated entirely by the director. In a comic-book, you can linger over a panel to admire the artwork for as long as you want, or whizz through them so you’re basically picking up subliminal imagery. The text becomes a complement to the imagery, filling in the gaps. And the imagery is great. I now have a new backdrop on my PC desktop. Page 18 of the PDF, should you be interested. 

“Everything went to hell. And now that’s where I live.” But this also means exposition and action can co-exist: the latter doesn’t need to pause. Consequently, over the 24 pages here, there’s barely a pause for breath. You reach the end, to be honest, not necessarily sure what’s going on, but this is just part one of four. I presume things will become clear – or, at least, clearER – in due course. We have a dark-haired woman, kidnapping the son of a gangster because of reasons apparently connected to her husband’s death – leading to the quote above. There’s another woman, blonde, following in her wake – with bad intent if her line, “I’ll call you when the woman is dead”, is anything to go by. I will bet the house that they will end up facing off against each other, before very long. I certainly hope so. 

“It’s pulling from Beyond Hypothermia and Naked Weapon, and all of Hong Kong,” says Kindlon. So far, Naked Aggression has been more about the aggression than the naked – though cleavage certainly abounds, and an alternate cover (below) does deliver. It is difficult to judge the series overall, in the same way as giving your verdict of a film based on its opening twenty minutes. We’ve all seen movies which hit the ground running, only to run out of steam. But there’s no reason this shouldn’t be able to sustain the blistering pace: it’s not like a comic-book is going to run out of budget. If we weren’t looking to move house, this might well be the one to entice me back into the comic-shop. Failing that, I’ll just have to wait for the movie version, hopefully starring Eva Green and Charlize Theron. 

Author: Patrick Kindlon (text) and Marco Ferrari (art)
Publisher: Image Comics, available through their site, from July 2, or for Kindle through Amazon.
Book 1 of 4 in the series, also available in four alternate covers as below.

Two Weeks to Live

  By

★★★½
“Family values.”

If you described this as a dark spoof of Hanna, you might not be so far away. Since the death of her father, Kim Noakes (Williams) has been brought up off the grid by her controlling, survivalist mother, Tina (Clifford). She makes a trip to civilization to scatter his ashes, meets brothers Nicky (Rizwan) and Jay (Taheen Modak), who prank her that the world is ending. Falling for this, Kim decides to take revenge on the man who killed her father, crime boss Jimmy Davies. But in doing so, she kicks of a spiral of events putting her new friends, her mother and herself in severe peril, from the dangerous and smart Alan Brooks (Flemyng).

The comedy here is largely “fish out of water,” with Kim largely unaware of the nuances of modern life – but capable of killing you, eight different ways, with the contents of a drawer. Conversely, the brothers are naive and dumb respectively, and utterly unsuited for the violent mess into which they have become involved, desperately clinging onto normality. Admittedly, their own actions don’t help, Jay lifting a suitcase full of money from Davies’s house. Tina has own agenda too, having gas-lit her daughter in a variety of ways, lies which becomes more apparent to Kim over the course of the six, thirty-minute episodes. It’s all well-written, and I’m surprised it came and went without apparently much fanfare: I stumbled across it by accident, in Tubi’s “British crime” section.

You definitely need a British sense of humour to appreciate this: a lot of the comedy is bone-dry and self-deprecating, with Tina in particular a mistress of that most English form of wit, blistering sarcasm. However, the action proved rather better than I expected given the source and format. This does peak quite early, with a blistering brawl between Kim and Jimmy (above), which is one of the more hard-hitting I’ve seen on British television. [Jimmy is played by genre veteran Sean Pertwee, who is always good value. I could have sworn he was in Game of Thrones as well, which would have reunited him with Williams. But it seems he is the only British actor who wasn’t employed on the show!]

I was slightly sad that nothing thereafter quite reached the same level of hand-to-hand awesomeness. There is still a reasonable quota of action, but it’s more gun-based: the family which stays together, slays together, as Brooks and his henchwoman close in on the two families, and the cash-filled luggage. I found this the sort of unexpected delight which is a pleasure to stumble across. I had no real idea what to expect when I put on the first episode, but by the end, was shot-gunning episodes like they were tequila. While it would be nice to see more – I guess unlikely at this point – things are tidied up adequately, albeit in a somewhat contrived manner, involving a reluctant land-mine. All told though, more hits than misses.

Creator: : Gaby Hull
Star: Maisie Williams, Mawaan Rizwan, Sian Clifford, Jason Flemyng

Who Cares!

  By

★★½
“Hop to it!”

I would have sworn I had seen every example of Hong Kong girls-with-guns movies from the eighties. But this one had managed to escape my attention completely for 35 years, until accidentally stumbling across it on YouTube. It’s perhaps partly because it never seems to have received any kind of post-VHS release, being unavailable on DVD or streaming sites. Which is a little surprising since it combines two genres that have been quite popular in the West: not just GWG, but also hopping vampires, as in the Mr. Vampire franchise. It’s a rather awkward combo, and there’s definitely significant potential wasted. Yet I’m fairly certain it’s going to be unlike anything you’ve seen before.

It begins with a gang robbing a mausoleum of antiques for their boss, Yiang Wei (Wei). However, included in their haul is a pearl, which was the only thing keeping a traditional Chinese vampire (Kwai) pinned down. It’s now free to roam the land, terrorizing the possessor of the pearl, who is the only person that can see it. Meanwhile, a special police squad has been set up to investigate the ring behind the recent slew of antique thefts. In charge of it is Sergeant Wang Wai Shan (Hu), who follows the evidence to Wei, after one of his minions turns up dead, a victim of the vampire. Wang and her mostly-female team then find themselves having to take on both the hopping undead and the criminals.

The results are kinda decent, but it’s not hard to think of ways it could have been better, particularly from the perspective of this site. I was expecting to get a final battle pitting Wang against Wei. Doesn’t happen. I did like how the cops find a way to control the vampire, and I was thinking it was then going to end up as Wang + vampire against Wei. Doesn’t happen either, with Wang entirely sidelined, and replaced with a climax which is simply villain versus vampire (before an ending which is… certainly an ending, and that’s all I can say). Hu deserves better, and so does Sophia Crawford, who is one of Wei’s minions, and gets almost nothing to do. Admittedly, it was only Crawford’s second film.

Not to say that Wei is a slouch. I simply preferred earlier scenes, such as Wang and her squad battling the largely invisible vampire around her father’s apartment, with a range of improvised weapons, from crosses – would those really work on a Chinese vampire? – to flamethrowers. It’s fairly refreshing how nobody really mentions the fact a woman is in charge, with everyone apparently accepting Wang’s role, and there’s not too much in the way of dumb slapstick, which can derail proceedings. As horror, it’s certainly light in tone. Perhaps it might have benefited from sticking to one genre or the other, instead of trying to be two things at once, and coming in as largely forgettable in both departments.

Dir: Chiu-Jun Lee
Star: Sibelle Hu, Dick Wei, Kara Ying, Kwai Po Chun

Inspector Sabiha

  By

★★★
“In-flight entertainment.”

Under other circumstances, this six-episode TV series, would potentially be a marginal entry. But, just as I try to take the historical era into account, I think the location from which a film comes should also be a consideration. Some countries and cultures are simply more action heroine friendly than others. What would be groundbreaking in one region, might not even qualify from elsewhere. This is from Pakistan, and is almost the first such entry in our site’s history. [There’s just Hunterwali which… yeah!] I originally saw this in a condensed movie version, at an altitude of forty thousand feet and a ground speed of 555 mph. For I stumbled across it on the in-flight entertainment system while flying back from the UK to Arizona.

It adequately occupied a bit of time on what ended up being a fourteen-hour flight, thanks to an engine issue delaying the take-off. My grumpiness at this was, however, somewhat alleviated by unexpected GWG on the seat-back TV. By Western standards, it would definitely be considered mild, almost to the Lifetime TVM level (which makes sense, basically being a TV movie). But Pakistan isn’t exactly a beacon of empowerment. This female cop was “a giant step for womankind in the Pakistani drama arena”, according to local writers, so we need to cut it some slack. The heroine, Sabiha (the unfortunately named Butt), is the daughter of Inspector Saeed Shah, who was murdered in the line of duty while undercover. She wants to follow in his footsteps – her uncle Akbar (Ehteshamuddin) is also on the force.

He has a nasty revelation: her father, who was also his brother, had gone over to the side of the criminals. This was something covered up to avoid embarrassing the force to outsiders, though it’s an open secret within the police. Sabiha is devastated by this, adding on to problems with her self-confidence as she goes through the training, to the point she is unable to fire her gun, despite the encouragement of a friendly trainer. She eventually is able to cowboy up and persist. Passing the police exam gives her the access necessary to investigate her father’s case, find out the truth about his death, and dispense justice to those who were responsible.

To be honest, Butt doesn’t really look the part – too much make-up for a cop, by Western standards. Nor is she especially convincing in action, though it is cool when she whips off her burqa to reveal her police uniform underneath, and storms the villain’s headquarters. There are some decent emotional moments too. In this area, the heroine is outdone by her mother (Iffat Omar), who is impressively intense, such as when begging her husband not to go undercover. Writer-director Sarwar cuts up the time-line, so we bounce back and forth from Sabiha’s training to her childhood, but it always remains comprehensible. Despite not having seen Gunah, the series to which this is a prequel, it proved good enough to hold my attention. Though considering my location, guess I couldn’t exactly walk out…

I subsequently found all six TV episodes with English subs, and a playlist is embedded below. 

Dir: Adnan Sarwar
Star: Raba Butt, Enteshamuddin, Yasir Hussain, Yasir Nawaz

Sira

  By

★★
“Just deserts.”

Sira (Cissé) is a young African woman, travelling through the fringes of the Sahara Desert in Burkina Faso, on the way to get married to Jean-Sidi (Barry). However, their caravan gets involved in an incident with Islamic terrorists, which escalates into murder, with Sira being abducted by the terrorist leader, Yéré (Minoungou). He changes his mind, raping Sira and leaving her in the desert, because she is “not worthy” to die by his weapon. She survives, and stumbles across the terrorist camp, and takes shelter nearby, sneaking in to obtain food and water. After a group of other kidnapped women show up, to be used as sex slaves, Sira begins to put a plan in motion, with help from an unexpected ally.

Lured in by the poster, I was hoping for something along the lines of Revenge, especially in the wake of early dialogue about how the heroine had been trained to take care of herself by her brothers. But this is a very different kettle of fish. I have a bunch of questions, not least over the time frame involved. Sira is living in the rocks beside the camp for the better part of a year. It’s long enough, to go from not being aware of a pregnancy, to giving birth in the same rocks. While it’s certainly a memorable image to have her blazing away with an automatic weapon, her child strapped across her back… It doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

Yéré’s terrorists don’t appear to do anything much for the great bulk of the time either, except sitting around. They do eventually go out on an attack in the final twenty minutes, but the amount of terror they generate is minimal. Indeed, everyone does their share of sitting around since nobody seems particularly bothered by Sira’s long-term absence. The police, and the authorities in general, are notable by their absence until the very end. Though this may be an accurate assessment of the local situation; I can’t say. Jean-Sidi makes a half-hearted effort to join up with Yéré’s forces. The fact he’s a Christian proves a bit of an instant red flag there, and Yéré does not take kindly to the attempt. 

It’s only at the very end things crack open, with the terrorist camp proving to be unexpectedly flammable. It does offer a glimpse into a culture of which I had little experience or knowledge, and Sira is an interesting character, one whose resilience is remarkable, given the circumstances under which she has to operate. This was the first time Burkina Faso submitted a movie to the Oscars (it was filmed in Mauritania for safety reasons), and is technically decent. But for a film over two hours long, it’s in need of significantly greater narrative impetus. It has the shape of a thriller, yet definitely wants to be a drama. At least I get to cross another country off my map of world cinema.

Dir: Apolline Traoré
Star: Nafissatou Cissé, Lazare Minoungou, Abdramane Barry, Nathalie Vairac

Bad Day

  By

★★★
“Not-so fair cops.”

Rebecca Ryan (Goose) is an undercover cop, who has been working for three years as “Margaret”, infiltrating the McCann family, a South London organized crime outfit, with Darius Cruise (Ofoegbu) as her handler. He’s just been given a new partner, Abby Barrett (Air), and isn’t happy about it. Rebecca, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Harry McCann (Calil), but his sister, Marla (Riana Husselmann), recently out of jail, suspects something is up with ‘Margaret’. When an incident appears to blow her cover, and Rebecca returns home to find her daughter murdered, she decides it’s time to make the entire McCann family pay for their actions. As the title suggests, everything subsequently unfolds over the course of a single day.

It’s all a bit wobbly at the beginning, with the director struggling to get all the various plot threads up and running. Trimming them back would have been helpful, such as Abby’s contentious relationship with her former partner; it adds little. Air’s performance isn’t the best either; she’s considerably less convincing as a cop than Goose or Ofoegbu, although the latter is clearly channelling the spirit of Idris Elba as Luther. As a low-rent version thereof, he’s not bad, with the script throwing on copious quantities of cynicism, such as Darius telling his partner, “The only thing I don’t believe in anymore is this job.” Goose is decent too, playing a woman who is teetering on the edge of losing herself, with her daughter providing the sole reliable anchor in her life.

When that tether gets removed, there’s really only one way things can go: downhill, quite rapidly. The problem is, the further in we get, the more likely it is that the McCann’s weren’t responsible (though I have to say, the actual resolution doesn’t feel credible, especially for a British-set movie). But by the point Rebecca discovers the truth, a quote from Lady Macbeth fits the anti-heroine very well: “I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” It does feel almost Shakespearean, in the sense that tragedy seems inevitable, and the characters are largely powerless to do anything about it.

I’d like to have seen more of Marla, who makes an immediate impression from her first scene. The character has a calculating edge, and a civilized veneer thinly covering a most unfeminine fondness for brutality. I almost wish the makers had gone the whole way, and made Darius a woman as well, to complete the quartet of strong female characters. The low budget does occasionally show through, and some of the action might leave a bit to be desired, though the inevitable brawl between Marla and Rebecca does achieve a satisfactory resolution. However, by concentrating on the women, it does stand out from the slew of “gritty” British crime film to come out in the two thousands. While it’s no Luther, I found myself adequately entertained and surprisingly engaged.

Dir: Ian David Diaz
Star: Claire Goose, Donna Air, Anthony Ofoegbu, George Calil

Desolation, by David Lucin

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Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½

When the apocalypse comes, if popular fiction is any guide, it’s going to be undead and craving brains. But not far behind in terms of literary popularity, appears to be an EMP. This is a high altitude nuclear detonation, which would unleash an electromagnetic pulse – hence the name – capable of frying anything with a circuit board, continent-wide. It is generally not good for civilization. I think this is the first such book I’ve covered, and I was particularly intrigued, because it’s set here in Arizona. Which is a little weird, because the author appears to be based out of Vancouver, British Columbia. I presume some connection to the state.

It mostly takes place in the northern mountain town of Flagstaff, where Jenn Jansen is attending college when the power goes out, and the world grinds to a halt. Not that it’s exactly a great world to begin with, already teetering on the edge of famine and war, with multiple conflicts around the globe (in particular between the US/NATO and China), while most of the population live in poverty, even in the United States. Jenn’s parents are down in Phoenix, which… the author doesn’t seem to like much, calling it a “desert hellscape” among other things. [Looks out window] OK, he’s not wrong… But it doesn’t get any better after the city gets hit by multiple air-burst nukes. Help is not coming to Flagstaff any time soon.

Jenn has to figure out what to do, though at least initially, basic survival is not too rough. However, she gradually realizes not everyone is willing to pull together, and hard times make for difficult moral decisions. She’s rather better at these than her boyfriend, Sam, who comes from a more privileged background. His family are in Payson – between Flagstaff and Phoenix – and the pair head down there to bring them up to Flagstaff. That pushes Jenn further along her evolution. According to the author, “By Book 4, she’s not the impulsive, bossy, and sometimes annoying girl from Book 1; she is a soldier and a cool-headed leader,” and I can see the early signs of this appearing already, though I never found her especially annoying. 

Action-wise, it is fairly restrained, but there is a sense of escalation, with the book giving us good insight into Jenn’s thoughts. Of note, her reaction to having to use increasing degrees of violence is explored in more detail than I would have expected. It’s not easy or facile, but by the end, the blood on her hands is mounting. I sense that’s only going to increase, as it appears the next part has her becoming part of a reconnaissance expedition to Phoenix. That’s a story I am interested in reading, and not just for reasons of personal familiarity, also to see how Jenn develops. But perhaps my neighbourhood might make an appearance. Even if it’s going to be a bit radioactive.

Author: David Lucin
Publisher: Highway 3 Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Desolation series.

Closure

  By

★★½
“The truth is out there. Somewhere.”

Surprising to see a rough, occasionally nasty slice of rape-revenge was funded by the British government, through the National Lottery scheme. Not that I’m complaining: it’s preferable to period nonsense or kitchen-sink dramsa depicting inner-city life. But I would not typically have expected something as unrepentantly exploitative to get money from such a source. The film kicks off when Alice (Anderson) and her boy toy, Adam (Dyer) are on the way home from a party. A road rage incident leads to him being savagely assaulted, and her being gang-raped, leaving both of them severely traumatized by their experience. Interestingly, it’s Alice who is the one most intent on finding the perpetrators and taking revenge.

Turns out her recently deceased father was a soldier, who taught her not to turn the other cheek, and left her a weapon with which she can carry out her vengeance. This makes her considerably more interesting a character than Adam, who now mopes around smoking weed and suffering from erectile dysfunction. Alice locates one of the attackers, Heffer (Calf), and sets her plan in motion. However, things become increasingly complicated, first with the presence of his daughter, and the discovery that his participation in Alice’s sexual assault was not as purely predatory as it seemed at the time. She begins to understand that retribution can be messy; on the other hand, Adam is becoming more gung-ho about the process, and refuses to back down from his revenge.

I guess these two sides of the coin, and their contrast, are key to the film’s message, though the sudden way in which it ends might leave you wondering if there’s any genuine message intended at all. Maybe it was all the fulfillment of some weird, albeit understandable, Gillian Anderson fetish for writer-director Reed (there are a couple of scenes which lean towards that interpretation). She is certainly the best thing about this, and her journey from predatory cougar through to literally predatory cougar would have been worth following. Dyer continuing to get roles remains a mystery, not least because he was at least five years older than his supposed 23-year-old character here, and can’t exactly make up the deficit in acting ability.

“Do you know what they did after they finished with me? They laughed.” That’s Alice’s chilling explanation of why she’s so hell-bent on making Heffer and his colleagues pay. While I did appreciate the way the rapists were neither your stereotypical yokels nor yoofs, being middle-class and middle-aged, it’s really only when Anderson is on screen that this movie shows credible signs of life, Anderson again proving that she is considerably more than Dana Scully. Even here though, the film manages to fumble things in a final act which feels a severe cop-out, albeit after we are treated to the site of Alice sticking a gun where a gun is not normally expected to go. Take that mental image with you, the next time you buy a lottery ticket.

Dir: Dan Reed
Star: Gillian Anderson, Danny Dyer, Anthony Calf, Adam Rayner 
a.k.a. Straightheads

The Killing

  By

★★★★
“Happy endings are for losers!”

Spoilers will follow! At one point, Scandinavian noir, was a genre mostly well-known only in Europe and to die-hard crime novel readers. But the ground-breaking female characters who have made the genre recognized worldwide in the past two decades consists of a trio. In addition to the most well-known, Lisbeth Salander of the Millennium series, there is Saga Norén of Bron: The Bridge, and Sarah Lund of The Killing. All of these have been remade in a number of other countries – not only America. But I think it’s uncontroversial to say that none ever came close to the originals. There is something to the way these series are constructed and conceptualized by our Scandinavian neighbours, that film crews in other countries just can’t re-create.

It’s not just, for example that American productions have higher budgets. Other, non-American remakes or “new versions” aren’t able to re-create that special “air” either. It’s a specific atmosphere these series have, even though those in charge of production usually understand the attraction of the original. Although Scandinoir existed well before those three series. Elements like more realistic depictions of criminal acts, very often with social aspects interwoven, and investigators with personal problems, can be traced in literature back to the 1960s, and on television to the 1970s and 80s. A realistic local background with more down-to-earth investigators, as opposed to classic Anglo-American super-detectives like Sherlock Holmes, or private investigators like Philip Marlowe, started around then, and can still be found in long-running classic German TV crime series, Tatort (literal: “scene of the crime”).

Though before these new shows, some starring some quite “damaged” women, hardly anyone except die-hard fans of crime stuff noticed. The show that served as a wake-up call for everything was The Killing. This Danish-German co-production ran for three seasons, from 2007-2012. [It seems whenever there is a new Scandinavian crime series, ZDF, the second public TV channel of Germany, is involved. They also co-produced the Millennium and Bridge shows, among other Scandinavian series.] The original version totalled 40 episodes of 55 minutes; some countries broadcast it as 20 episodes of around 110 minutes. The German version was like that: you always can tell the break between episodes, by the two-minute montage, with music underneath. It received a number of remakes, in America, Turkey and Egypt.

As typical for these Scandinavian shows, they are slow-burn mysteries. This means taking their time, introducing countless suspects and going far beyond the case, such as adding a political dimension to the scope. I was astonished to discover they did really only cover one case for an entire season. In an average episode of Tatort the case would be solved and finished after the usual 90 minutes. Here, it takes longer – much longer! – especially in the first season. It started to drag a little bit, as solving the single case of a vanished girl lasted almost nineteen hours on screen. That said, the longer experience definitely has its advantages.

For perhaps the first occasion, the suffering of the family members left behind after a beloved person dies, is shown in what feels like almost real-time. That’s remarkable, as in almost any crime story I have ever seen, these feelings are usually only vocalized in one or two sentences. Just recently, I watched an old Italian giallo and it felt almost ridiculous how the main character seemed hardly moved at all, as her entire family was exterminated, one by one. Is such behavior normal? Normal people mourn their beloved ones. Maybe some do it more quietly than others, but most movies or series leave this, very important, aspect out, with it usually secondary to finding the perpetrator. The Killing takes that time, showing us the after-effects on a family barely able to go on, needing psychological help, and taking pointless, misguided revenge, with acts that can’t bring back what has been lost.

Admittedly, they might have gone on in this direction a bit too much – especially in the first season, which is twice as long as the others – and I was starting to look at my watch. Though things are always happening, you may lose a bit of patience as yet another suspect is presented to you. What, they are proven innocent? Okay, how about this one? Oh, and there is new evidence, it might actually have been the one we let off the hook last episode! And so on.

In all three seasons, a pattern of political involvement is found. For example, a pool car belonging to a political party might have been involved in a kidnapping, with the story taking place in the run-up to elections. Suddenly, the whole process of parties in electoral battle mode can be affected by the outcome of the investigations, as well as individuals’ dirty laundry being brought up by the other side or the police. One of the main politicians in the first season is played by Lars Mikkelsen (Mads’ brother), who’d go on to play a great villain in the Benedict Cumberbatch “Sherlock” show. In other seasons, the police have to deal with other institutions and organizations hampering their work, such as the military or the secret service. The third season deals with a major industrial corporation, as the company chief’s daughter is kidnapped and might be held in one of his shipping containers.

But the main character is always the introverted police commissioner, Sarah Lund (Gråbøl). Lund doesn’t come across as the most accessible character, to say the least. It’s a character trait she shares with her sisters in spirit, Salander and Norén. Though of the three, she might be the most “normal”, and her biggest problem an inability to communicate. Maybe it’s too cold in Denmark, and you don’t want to open your mouth if it’s not necessary? She can be quite talkative – when it’s about the case. But it’s always about the case and not her family. In season one, Lund’s fiancé and son wait for her to come to them in Sweden. Though she wants it, there is always something. Her superior insists she has to continue her work, as the only one who can, despite her successor already waiting in the wings. Even after boarding the plane, she returns once again to solve crime for another day in Copenhagen. Then everything changes when her colleague gets shot.

She gets smarter in the second season, now carrying her gun with her at all times. This will save her life at the end of the series, which deals with a series of murders of former Danish soldiers. Sometimes you can’t solve everything just with your mind! But there is always an apparent lack of social competence. Lund doesn’t seem to understand the emotional needs of her family (and others) and that’s why she loses them. The case is always more important for her. She becomes quite obsessive in her investigations – even after everyone, including her new chief Brix (Morten Suurballe) sees a case as solved. You thought Columbo with his, “There is still a little question I have…”, could get on your nerves? Wait, until you meet Sarah Lund!

There is a learning curve and character arc for the character. She is hesitant to come back to work in season 2, and in season 3 realizes that she has failed, not only as a mother but in her social life in general. She would like to have a closer relationship with her son, but he doesn’t want anything to do with her anymore. She manages to take care of his pregnant girl-friend, though even in front of the hospital room where the girl and her son are holding her newborn grandchild, she still turns around because… Well, you know… The case… Ultimately, the show can be seen as a tragedy. Yes, the cases all get solved in the end. But that doesn’t mean that we get a truly happy ending.

Season 1. The father of the murdered girl kills the murderer, and will most likely go into prison for that. Season 2. The minister of justice uncovers the corruption of the ruling government, but can’t do anything against it, as everyone is covering it up. He can only decide between joining them, thereby keeping his career, or quitting. Season 3 is the worst of all. While the kidnapped girl is saved, the industrialist must remain silent about the cover-up of his board of directors, in order to keep the company going. Meanwhile, Lund finds out who raped and murdered another girl years ago, and sees no alternative but to shoot the murderer. The ending has her leaving her home country, perhaps to return one day with new evidence to justify the killing, instead of finally getting together with a past love from her youth (Kass, who would later enjoy success as Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Carl Mørck).

As there never was a fourth season, she might still be searching that evidence abroad. But happy endings certainly look different in Scandinavia. After all is said though, this is a good show with great and convincing actors. You can enjoy its complex story-lines, its gritty, sometimes almost cynical, world view and darkness, if you are willing to be patient and have enough time. The second and third seasons are much easier to watch than the first. The Scandinavian approach to crime series is definitely different one from what other European or American series offer their audiences. But if you get used to them, they can be quite addictive as this show showed. On its release, The Killing became especially successful in Great Britain, which might then have drawn the attention of American producers in this direction.

It started the new wave of Scandinavian noir in 2007, which seems to have lasted for about a decade, ending ten years later in the Hollywood adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s The Snowman, with Michael Fassbender as Harry Hole. But if you are in the mood for more psychologically damaged, Scandinavian, anti-heroines, you’ll find plenty of others, such as Annika Bengtzon or Rebecka Martinsson. There are also reports that Amazon Prime is planning a new show on good ol’ Lisbeth Salander. Who knows, maybe the era of troubled Scandinavian female investigators isn’t over yet?

Creator: Søren Sveistrup
Star: Sofie Gråbøl, Søren Malling, Mikael Birkkjær, Nikolaj Lie Kaas