Den tredje vågen

In The Hague, Holland, the new chief of Europol Sellberg (Lennart Hjulström) broadcasts a tough speech against the third wave of crimes in Europe, promising to suffocate the schemes of powerful criminals. He invites his former detective and friend Johan Falk (Jakob Eklund) for a meeting, with the intention to join him to his team. Meanwhile, the executive Rebecca (Irina Björklund) accidentally opens one correspondence of her mate, Kane (Ben Pullen), and finds that he cleans illegal money for European mobsters. When she decides to disclose her discoveries to Europol, his life is jeopardized by the associates of her boy-friend, but Rebecca is rescued by Johan. They have to fight against the organized crime to save their lives and Johan's family.

I decided to watch "Den Tredje Vågen" on video to kill time in the rainy Saturday's afternoon in Rio de Janeiro. I love European movies, but due to the lack of tradition in the action genre, I had minor expectation with this film. However, this movie is a surprisingly good Swedish-British thriller, full of action and usual exaggeration of the Hollywood films. The absolutely unknown cast has great performances, the Swedish Irina Björklund is very gorgeous and "Den Tredje Vågen" is an excellent entertainment. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Garras da Corrupção" ("Claws of the Corruption")

This is quite a fascinating movie. These days it came as add-on with TVmovie magazine (Germany), which lowers the threshold to get it for EUR 3.50.

It's documented as a Swedish/Finnish co-production. I didn't see a Finnish angle, but the Swedish is strong, even though the movie hardly ever plays in Sweden: the hero and family, as well as Rebecca the heroine, and Sellberg the short-lived commander, and the female officer in Göteborg, all come from there.

Action happens in UK, Netherlands, Germany, going south (from Swedish point of view) ever more. And going badder. "There's no place like home" (Sweden: for feeling secure, or burying commanders), and all other Europe is a battleground between toothless Europol and privatized security firm EuroSec (which in London has 20 times worth the equipment of City Police).

I felt scared by the seemingly uncontrollable powers of EuroSec (and their runaways). If this corporate security firm can overwhelm police, a fundamental concept breaks away. In the end, the bad guys lose. But will something like this happen again? You bet...

Certainly not a perfect movie, but very thought-provoking. The Munich riot was over-the-top, as mentioned before, but seems to get closer to the reality of EU/G8/... summits (rubber bullets are still only discussed, but not used by German police yet). I can at least recommend this to European viewers: a decent action movie with deeper context.

The top-budget Swedish movie of all time- "The third wave", with a budget of ~35 million SEK (errh some $4.5 million...) scores well for a Swedish action movie. It's predecessors is among the top of the later years' movies and "Third wave" continues the work of art. Jacob Eklund is as before excellent in his role as Johan Falk, we have a tight script and the plot is both interesting and somewhat applicable to reality. Of course there are some flaws, and the storyline gets a little messy at times, but overall I was very satisfied and I am happy that the capacity is there for making high-class movies although the budgets compared to US numbers are substantially smaller. it also proves that money does not equal quality. 8/10

Sweden has a literary tradition of very high-quality political crime and action thrillers, starring heroes like Martin Beck, Carl Hamilton - and Johan Falk. All of them have been turned into movies, and the latest trilogy with Johan Falk - Noll Tolerans, Livvakterna and Den Tredje Vågen - continues the honor roll. These are very well-produced and exciting action movies; certainly impressive by any Scandinavian standard.

They are not perfect, though. Good as they are, they are marred by formulaic elements, like extremely evil bad guys who always threaten to beat and/or kill women, which is "the easy way" for a writer to show how evil the bad guys are. As a result, the realism suffers. The third movie in particular also gets unrealistic in the dramatic finale, with Helén (Falk's girlfriend, mostly an innocent bystander) suddenly turning into an expert pickpocket and "undercover operative". The massive riots in Munich were also a bit over the top, I thought, and not really necessary for the story, except to allow the writer to avoid having Falk do all the dirty work of disposing of the bad guys.

But even so, these movies are highly entertaining and well worth watching. The movies get progressively better, building excitement as they go. The independent security force in Livvakterna was very cool, and the international action in Den Tredje Vågen, with Nicholas Farrell's well-acted character switching sides because he's all integrity, was very satisfying.

7 out of 10.

Swedish action movies. Taste those words put together like that. It just doesn't taste right. Or, at least that is what i used to think. Anders Nilsson has forced me to at least in part reconsider my stance on Swedish action movies with his trilogy about the hard-case Johan Falk.

Usually the problem with Swedish action-movies consist of three things: (1) Hollywood complex. It seems that most Swedish directors have seen too many Hollywood action-movies without realizing that they need a budget to emulate that style. (2) The budget. Closely linked to the first point. Swedish movies simply don't have the budget for full-fledged action-scenes. (3) Stefan Sauk. I don't know HOW the man does it, but it seems he uses some kind of supernatural power to force EVERY director in Sweden to cast him in their action movies. Except for Anders Nilsson who stays away from Sauk mercifully enough.

Readers might already be acquainted with Anders Nilssons film-making from the first two installments in this trilogy. I can start off by saying that this movie is far superior to both the previous films. The technical quality, the acting and the action are all much more refined. This is without a doubt the best action movie to come out of Sweden for a very long time. Perhaps the best ever?

So what makes this such a great movie? Well first of all it seems Anders Nilsson manages to keep his Hollywood-complex in check. It seems he knows that he can't have two hours of intense action so instead he goes for a better approach. The action scenes are few and far between, but well made when they DO happen. Also he doesn't hesitate to use foreign actors which feels like something more Swedish directors should do. It adds substantially to the realism of the movie. Last but not least the script feels properly worked through. Many times scripts for Swedish movies feel unfinished and filled with strange plot-holes and nonsensical twists. This is at least one step up in quality from most others.

In the end this finally feels like a Swedish action movie that people outside of Sweden can actually enjoy. That the budget is still well below 5 million USD shows of course, but the money is used wisely and this is an enjoyable experience. Hopefully other Swedish directors now understand that the bar has been raised. I rate this 6/10.