In 2008 the BBC did what the Swedes have been doing for years, and commissioned adaptations of Henning Mankell's Wallander novels. They got Kenneth Branagh to play the leading role and the resulting television won Best Series at the BAFTAs. Such has been the demand for Wallander in Sweden that by the time the BBC wised up the Swedes had adapted all of Mankell's novels (starring the quite superb Rolf Lassgård, from After the Wedding) and even spawned a TV series of original stories from Mankell outlines. The first of those was Before the Frost, which was released theatrically and starred Krister Henriksson (from Faithless and Reconstruction), and that along with another of the initially commissioned 13 new stories was shown on BBCFour to accompany the Branagh Wallanders.
Hämnden is the first of the new batch of 13 Wallanders being made in Sweden, still starring Henriksson, and it was released theatrically with the rest to follow on dvd then tv. The set up is that local top brass policeman Kurt Wallander has moved into a house by the sea and during a get-together the lights across the whole city of Ystad go out following the bombing of a local station where the power is routed. During the blackout a prominent local citizen who has organised a controversial art showing is murdered and the following day when parked cars start exploding the military is brought in as the blame is increasingly placed on potential Islamic terrorism.
So an extremely political and topical backdrop for this entry in the pantheon of Wallanders, it's the usual nuts and bolts police procedural. Johanna Sällström used to play Wallander's daughter, but a couple of years ago she committed suicide, there's a moment when the new public prosecutor (the utterly divine Lena Endre, who played Henriksson's lover in Faithless, giving one of the finest performances in decades in the process) casually asks Kurt if he has children and there's a brooding moment as he says yes. Henriksson is quite excellent here, whereas in the past he's either had the show stolen by Sällström or too hackneyed a plot to work with, he really gets his teeth into the role here and absolutely delivers. Extremely soulful turn, believable when rattled and very genuine throughout.
Unfortunately, despite Henriksson's game efforts and some nice touches from the supporting cast, the unfolding story is very formulaic and not really deep or incisive enough to work in this medium. It requires a lot of close cutting to synchronise the "reveal" and from then on out the film goes downhill, culminating in a rather limp finale. That said though the cinematography is especially fine and the film certainly looks the part. Ultimately a solid, but unispired piece of work, which is a good kick-start for the new series of films. As a stand-alone film it's not as good as Before the Frost, but as a series-opener it's fine.
Wallander: Skulden (Debt)
I also managed to see the next film in the series, Skulden, and it was a better piece of work all round. The plot of this was the disappearance of a boy from school, with a recently released paedophile the prime suspect and the teacher in charge behaving strangely and lying to the police (i.e. Wallander) about her actions during the disappearance.
Henriksson isn't as good as he was in the previous film, but Endre has more to do here and their developing on screen relationship is very nice (and hardly surprising given their chemistry together in Faithless). The way the plot unfolds is interesting, but it's more than Mankell's outline is interesting, whereas the details of how it's fleshed out lack a little and seem too simplistic to be fully satisfactory.
The drip-feeding of information is handled better and while it's not unpredictable, they don't reveal their hand too soon. The young new cops introduced in Hämnden aren't given much to do and it seems that the only way they can shift the plot along is by making the one older cop especially incompetent (he fails to protect a charge in the first one and allows a prisoner escape in this one). So a distilling down of the station as a whole, but when that means more Endre then that is only a good thing. Settling in to the series, looking forward to more as and when they come out.