Stockholm Marathon

/the following refers to all Beck-films with Gösta Ekman, 1993-1994/

Mr. Ekman is a famous Swedish theater and film actor of many years, although he is not known much outside Scandinavia. His portrayal of top detective Martin Beck is a mixture of Colombo and Morse, but Swedish backwardness makes him sometimes too dull and predictable, his workmates are more vivid persons, particularly Lennart Kollberg and Gunvald Larsson, performed by Kjell Bergqvist and Rolf Lassgård, respectively. As the script depicts the life in Sweden in the 1960ies (according to novels by famous Swedish crime authors Sjöwall and Wahlöö), then it is a rather masculine society without much immigrants and not too serious crime - in comparison with the society from 1980ies onwards.

The rate of my interest in those 6 films was almost the same, I liked Roseanna least. Usually I like films where the killer is not revealed in the beginning - with very few exception when cat-and-mouse play can be eager to watch. With the Scandinavian pace the latter is seldom the case, most offender are lonely people with long-time personal issues.

By the way, there is quite a mess with Swedish titles translated into English, various and inconsistent versions available.