The Snowman (2017)

Too much of everything

Simply Perfect

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Harry Hole is a detective in the Oslo Police, and a highly successful one too. However, he has been having some personal problems of late, resulting in him turning to alcohol and prescription drugs. The lack of a case to solve isn't helping either. Then a woman disappears and another is murdered. This is looking like the work of a serial killer, one with a particular calling card - a snowman.Intriguing but flawed. The plot had great potential - an edgy murder-mystery with a lead character that has issues of his own. However, it fails to make the most of this potential.The sub-plots are half-baked and any character development is quite superficial. The attempts to develop Harry Hole's character, especially his relationship with his ex-girlfriend and his son, are quite cringeworthy. Throw in a host of American and British stars all trying to sound like Norwegians speaking English (wouldn't Norwegians speak Norwegian in Norway?) and it all feels very clumsy. Other than Michael Fassbender as Harry Hole, the American / British stars - Rebecca Ferguson, JK Simmons, Val Kilmer, Toby Jones, Adrian Dunbar, Chloe Sevigny - only seem there to give the film some credibility among American and British audiences. Only Ferguson has more than about 3 minutes of screentime. Val Kilmer's performance and character are so laughable they actually set the movie back.Why not have Norwegian actors speaking Norwegian, with subtitles? It would have felt much more authentic. This said, the main plot is quite intriguing and is what kept me watching despite all the negative aspects. There's a good red herring in the mix and the murderer isn't obvious until late in the piece. Plus, despite all the smokescreens and randomness that goes before, the whole thing does all come together at the end.In the end I liked it, but only just.

The critics gleefully rip this one to shreds. They have many valid points, such as the dragging flow, confusing narrative of it all--a insipid and pervasive banality underlying. But the acting, cinematography, lighting and direction keep this one moving in a lesser impact than Crimson Rivers, but at least at par with Dennis Quaid's "The Horseman." This one should probably be a mainstay in film school about a movie that failed though all the right ingredients were present: a popular novel about a serial killer, one of our best actors living, superb supporting cast and a great premise. But the film feels like they shot a bunch of scenes, threw them into a lotto grinder, and hoped for the best. Was the editing the fallure? And if so, who approve the editing failure? Was it a direction failure? If so, which producers signed off on their final product? Really, all they had to do was follow the basic 80's horror films: a traumatized child, a mother complex, followed by compulsive sausage grinding. Why didn't they just follow a few episodes of Blacklist or Hannibal? So Easy. Was the ego of the director allowed so much freedom to mess this one up this bad? Honestly, without any film experience at all, following basic formulas, I'm sure I could have directed this one into a pale version of Silence of the Lambs, leaving all tech to everyone else, and instead using my skills as a psychologist to work with the actors to give their best performance. Let's just see if we can come up with our own story....there is a detective. An alcoholic detective--who strangely experiences missing gaps in time. Suddenly, he begins receiving messages from a serial killer--formerly dubbed as "The Picasso Killer," (because he arranges his victims within grotesque picture frames in surreal fashion). The messages taunt and tease him, sending him vague clues he must decipher in order to stop the next killing. But then a twist occurs. The detective is actually suffering from multiple personality disorder, and it is then revealed he has been writing letters to himself all along. But then there is another twist, a twist within a twist, for we then understand the detective has a paradoxical form of multiple personality disorder in which he believes he and his twin are one person, due of course to childhood abuse. Who is the cop and who is the twin? The twin is a high ranking political candidate, sure of his victory, which is predicated on his twin detective solving his murderous rampage. Sounds great, doesn't it? Movie Time!

The only film that begs a second viewing to catch all the nuances and fully interpret the twisted perversion of the perpetrator. And I must compliment Tomas Alfredson for a brilliant film adaptation of Jo Nesbo's work. Although the book's conclusion is twisted in another direction, the finale explains what happens when married women have illicit sex with a lover while their adolescent children wait in the car outside; the victims' children have different fathers from the men they believe to be their father. Even Harry Hole's son, Oleg, is ignorant of who his real father is because his mother Rakel, Harry's ex-girlfriend, believes the boy isn't ready to accept the answer. Enjoy this movie, and look forward to the Son by Jo Nesbo that's about a young man in prison confessing to the crimes of others, but he breaks out to avenge his murdered father. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal.

I read the book and was super excited for this. I have NEVER wanted to walk out of a movie until this one. Just bad.