Fatal Crossing - As Garotas da Balsa

Streaming on Channel 4 (UK) made the slow paced thriller even slower.

The frequent adds, and the glitches at times in the streaming made this a difficult watch. I can't really take away stars from the film for reasons outside the film makers control, but it did impact on my enjoyment watching this.

I'll take one star away because of the ending, as it it just didn't meet my expectations.

I'll take another because it simply was a tad to slow at times. Like unnatural long pauses in phone calls. Only example I can give to avoid spoilers.

Another star is deducted because of the filming. At first I made excuses it was an old production but it appears from 2023, so a bit too old school or low budget.

The story line had potential but falls short at times, the yet another star deducted.

The acting is not great performance either, a final star deducted.

I'll leave the remaining 5, as I did watch it to the end. The plot delivers twists and turns and all sorts that belongs to a decent thriller, and it could have had great potential. At least it's a mini series with no cliffhangers.

I'll give it an extra star because it is a Danish series jumping it to six stars.

This is a slowly evolving narrative. It's not anything like as bad as some suggest. There is nothing doubt some scenes are on the ponderous side so the direction is a bit at fault. The story is credible and interestingly convoluted. There's definitely a number of points where you try to get Nora to behave a bit more rationally. Lisbeth is played with some menace by Susan A Olsen who stands out here compared to other roles she has been given in Borden or The Eagle. Over all worth watching. It is important to accept the play is about the character development and underlying psychology of the individuals here. I enjoyed it even with the slow pace.

Journalist Nora Sand has to step back from her prestigious London job after getting romantically involved with a person she was investigating. She returns to her home town in Denmark and shortly after her arrival an unknown person places an envelope containing photographs in her letter box. They are of two girls who vanished from a ferry on a school trip to England in 1980. She determines to investigate; in the process uncovering various long hidden secrets. At the same time another teenage girl goes missing; is there a connection?

I thought this was a decent enough mystery series. It may not be the best of the ever growing number of Nordic dramas available to watch in the UK but the story is solid and had some good twists that I hadn't really expected. The protagonist is a little difficult to like; especially early on as she manages to annoy many people she interacts with. However by the time she was in danger towards the end I did worry about how things would turn out. Early on it is a little slow moving but the finale is genuinely tense and claustrophobic. The cast does a solid job bringing the characters to life. Overall a decent enough addition to the Nordic Noir genre; worth a watch if you enjoy such series.

These comments are based on watching the series in Danish with English subtitles.

So they skimped on an editor - a shame. Could've worked in four episodes. Way too slow paced. The last two episodes, where you'd expect it to become exciting, 'thrilling' it completely deflates and leaves the viewers in this household yawning and glancing at their phones. The author surely can't be pleased with the result? The actors all do their best to make this glacier-moving narrative work, but have apparently all been told to speak excruciatingly slowly. If you have the time, then give it a go, but if you don't need to have everything repeated and regurgitated for you again and again, then give it a miss.

I had really been looking forward to this, nordic crime, as so often before, and hopefully as good as usual.

But despite a good story, based on a popular book, a cast that seems to deliver, even if not big stars, it ends up boring, because so little happens, way to many empty pauses, and characters that stare empty into the void. If the series was shorted by one third, it would work.

On top of that, lines that is too much, that no one would say in real life, and is too clumsy. Sometime I wonder if the book has a deeper layer, that the movie never dig enough into and we therefore do not understand. Instead we hear actors say sentences that is not really connected to anything and sound like a cliche.

It is not all bad, after all I watched it to the end. It's just never really good. Maybe I should read the book.