False Trail (2011)

Touches You

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This Swedish detective mystery is a film which is a sequel to a 90's movie I haven't actually seen, so I can't say how this one measures up against the original. Nevertheless, what can be said with certainty is this is another Scandinavian film which falls comfortably under the Nordic noir bracket. Like other north European thrillers, this one covers some dark and disturbing territory. A Stockholm police detective is sent to a small rural community to help solve the case of a missing girl, presumed murdered. He finds his more methodical methods at odds with the style of the lead police officer assigned to the case, a man who happens to be married to his widowed sister-in-law and who is now the father to his nephew.This is another solid bit of Nordic noir, yet I would classify it as a lesser example of the sub-genre. While it is undoubtedly a compelling enough crime story, the resolution to the mystery isn't perhaps very surprising and revealed quite early at that. This is compounded further by the film being a little overlong at two hours plus, given its quite basic and relatively straightforward narrative, while the final confrontation sequence was a bit too much in standard thriller territory and felt like a bit of a let-down for me. I did think the acting was very good though and the sense of place a strong point typical for these types of features. I could just have done with a little more meat to the mystery. Still, my criticisms are still only relative to the generally high quality of recent Scandinavian crime films overall, as this remains a pretty solid mystery-thriller nevertheless. Aside from the crime story, there are family and city versus small town complications added to the mix and which do expand the drama. Overall, I would classify this as a good film as opposed to being a great one though.

I actually prefer this to the original, which was also excellent but I give this the edge as the two protagonists play well off each other and in Torsten, they have a great character and in one sense the main character of the film (less film time but there is an edge to him and his shadow casts over the film). I say original as there is a 15year time gap in the films releases and in the film itself. Jägarna 1(The Hunters) in 1996 and Jägarna 2(False Trail) in 2011. You don't need to have seen the original but it would be better as there are a few references to the first film in it. Again like the original, there is a struggle for justice and again the small community where it seems harder to get into the open what should happen. This helps build the suspense and keeps the viewer enthralled as they watch the case draw towards the end.

There's been 15 years since the first "Jegerne" ("The Hunters), and it's very understandable that there was to be a follow up many years later. This is the finest of thrillers made by the Swedes. Kjell Sundvall has directed both, and that's probably why both th first and the second is almost equally good. The story is different, of course, but the feel and the tension is the same. The film never slips when it comes to make a tense feeling.This is the most true of sequels. We meet the same people 15 years later, where a policeman's family was involved in a murder. All these years later he is ordered back, after a young girl has gone missing.Both films is kept in the same tone. This is brilliantly done. It makes a kind of rural tension. Somewhere where bans between village people are so tight that no one dares speak up. We're in the rural North of Sweden, where hunting is an everyday event. The film depicts the nature and landscape in a beautiful way, and weaves this into the story.We feel the tension all along, and this tension is what makes the films such a treat. The actors are great, where both Rolf Lassgård and Peter Stormare are as good here as in the first. Fine actors. The first film was never forgotten. Not even outside of Sweden. That's why many also was drawn to this continuation many years later. It could've all gone wrong, this follow up. It doesn't, due to fine script writing, great acting, good instruction as well as the Swedish nature.

False Trail is named, and put under the heading, of a thriller. Because of the lack of actually thrilling thrillers, this title didn't mean much to me. But Kjell Sundvall's movie really does as it says on the tin.In this Swedish sequel, we follow Erik Bäckström, an aging policeman called down to his old home town where a young woman has gone missing. Here we watch a murder case unfold, and are not only confronted with Erik's painful past, but are lead into a deeper, more sinister mystery than we initially imagined.What first hits you about this movie is the dark, dense setting. Set in the picturesque woods of Norrland Sweden, you're struck by wintry lakes and friendly faces. In the beginning, the characters seem like boring, basically normal people. But when we delve into the mystery, and the first inklings of doubt and suspicion creep in, things begin to escalate, and our opinions change at every twist.This movie really kept me alive and thinking. Its plot twists were calculated and realistic, and the acting was superb. Peter Stromare's character was fantastically played; everything we once thought we knew about him is warped and distorted until we see the character that he is. Through tongue-in-cheek gore and unprecedented acts of violence, this story will make you jump in your seat and question every motive.Without giving too much away, notice Sundvall's directing; cutting into the truth like a fly on the wall, and letting the chaos run wild around him, until the characters realise the daunting reality just a step too late. Excellently done. In total, a well thought-through movie that did indeed thrill.