Den tredje vågen

"The Third Wave" is a strong European action-thriller that can measure itself with almost every American production.

Organized crime is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in Europe and the newly appointed leader of the international police force Europol is determined to attack the criminals head on. Unfortunately he himself is killed when three professional hit men try to kill Rebecca, a young woman who had fled England to get away from her very powerful 'white collar' criminal husband. The Swedish inspector Johan Falk (a former colleague of the assassinated Europol-leader) witnesses the hit. He kills one of the hit men and flees the scene Rebecca. Now Johan, Rebecca and Johan's wife and daughter are in danger and because they don't know who to trust, their first priority is just to stay alive.

As said, "The Third Wave' is a good film for a broad audience. The story gave the filmmakers the opportunity to put in a lot of action and because of that, is has become a fast film that doesn't have any weak moments. There are 5 different languages involved, but (with subtitles)it doesn't feel like a foreign film. You won't be able to see it in theaters, so you'll have to look for it at your local videostore.

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.

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.

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.

It's important to note, when looking at the reviews and comments on this movie, that nearly all of them were written more than a decade ago. At the time, news media and the entertainment industry were just waking up to the new crime waves from Eastern Europe, and speculations and predictions were wildly out of proportion. This movie is a good example of that, and while it probably seemed somewhat realistic at the time, watching it for the first time 12 years later means almost two hours of facepalming.

Another funny thing is that of this first trilogy of Johan Falk movies, only the first one holds up today. "Noll tolerans" was a tight, domestic thriller, and while suffering from some genre clichés, it could very nearly have been produced today. The next two, "Livvakterna" and this one, simply come across as sensationalist speculations run amok. Wildly inaccurate numbers and absurd conjecture are painfully present throughout. Yes, financial organized crime was and is of course a large and real international problem, but neither the European governments or society as we know it fell, as this movie would have us believe. If you're just getting into the Johan Falk movies, I'd recommend you watch the first one and then move on to the 2009 installments. This initial trilogy is in many ways a set of relatively well made thrillers, but their wildly distorted look at contemporary events come across as mostly embarrassing today.