Jägarna

THE HUNTERS is a crime thriller about a Swedish cop who returns to his home town to discover a hotbed of crime and deceit as he pursues a reindeer poaching gang. This stars WALLANDER actor Rolf Lassgard and it does feel very much like a Henning Mankell story, by which I mean it's a classic slice of Scandi-crime dripping with atmosphere and suspense.

The story that plays out is very nearly as icy as the chilly background in which the tale takes place. Certainly it's an exploration of the dark side of the human soul, with a typical police procedural in the first half giving way to something much more sinister and murderous in the second. Rolf Lassgard and Lennart Jahkel are excellent in the lead roles as a pair of brothers driven apart by living at opposite ends of the moral spectrum.

The only reason I'm not a massive fan of this genre is that I don't like the way that the criminals are never made to really pay for their crimes, due to the limitations of the justice system (which are all too apparent here). I prefer the sort of film where the protagonist goes outside of the law in order to bring the bad guys some true justice. Still, THE HUNTERS trades crowd-pleasing vengeance for chilly realism, offering no easy answers or a perfect ending; it's as dark and quietly devastating as it gets.

The hunters is a steady and mostly enjoyable thriller. I liked some of the acting and I liked the sense of the setting as well. I thought Rolf Lassgard was solid as Erik and Jarmo Makinen was actually a standout in his villainous role. The story line on paper is good and I felt like it was heading in a direction that I really liked but as the film went on I ended up feeling a bit let down. I expected a darker and more brooding tone than was actually delivered. I felt that as it progressed parts of the storyline and acting started to delve into the unbelievable and as a result of this it detracted from the overall quality of the thriller. I feel like the tone wasn't serious enough to coincide with events in the film and at various stages in the film things started to veer towards the ridiculous. The villains were over exaggerated, which turned it from a credible murder story into a story line that escalated too quickly without real substance. Overall I felt a bit disappointed and underwhelmed.

The story here is kicked off by reports of illegal slaughter of reindeer. Local police turn a blind eye to the culprits, so a Stockholm detective, who was originally from the area, returns home and investigates. Things get complicated when he discovers his younger brother is involved but worse than that, the poaching has escalated into murder.

I had seen the sequel to this Swedish thriller recently, a film called False Trail which was made fifteen years after the first part. I am guessing that The Hunters is a fairly influential film, as it comes very early in the cycle of Nordic Noir movies which have become very popular over the course of the last decade or so. Like others in this bracket, this one derives a fair bit of its interest from its local flavour, in this case the chilly expanses of Lapland. Like False Trail, this one also presents a mystery which is resolved for the audience quite early on, leaving the tension to come from knowing who is dangerous and wondering how the central detective will resolve the case. For me personally, I would have preferred a mystery over the combination of thriller with family drama which both films essentially boil down to a large degree, with the detective character put in a compromised position where he has to weigh up his family loyalty over his wider role to society as a policeman, with the added complication of small town suspicion of city people ever present. I think both films are broadly similar in terms of quality, with neither being especially excellent. I thought they were more an example of a solid, if unremarkable, detective stories combined with family drama with a northern Swedish backdrop. Nothing wrong with any of that of course but I would say these are good films as opposed to the best Nordic Noir has to offer.

Sundvall has a good ear for dialogue, and uses his locations to great effect. One main problem with contemporary Swedish movies is the wooden dialogue, which is largely avoided here. The story holds together well in the beginning, but the naturalism and believability Sundvall builds up completely vanishes towards the end, which is unfortunate and ultimately makes this a rather average movie. The script has some irritating holes, like the subplot with Lassgårds love interest which is mysteriously left unresolved. The last act is also a indication of the current "Americanization" of Swedish cinema which is a rather sad phenomenom. We should make movies on our own terms and be wary of too many american influences, those estethics tend to become overblown, predictable and unrealistic when translated into Swedish.

Sundvall has made an intense movie about illegal hunting. It's loaded with tense and excitement. Actually, it's about people living in a desolated place, not wanting to play with the rules of the community. We haven't seen such an intense movie in Sweden for at least a decade.