Review by paul2001sw-1

Henning Mankell's 'Wallander' detective stories have been variously brought to the screen. In some respects, they feel like a Swedish version of 'Inspector Morse': a morose middle-aged detective, with a fondness for alcohol and never-to-be-fulfilled romance with younger women, solves preposterous plots in a pretty town bizarrely afflicted by murders. If one can see past the genre, this sort of stuff can be quite entertaining, but I didn't feel much of the two previous (actually made later) versions of Wallander I'd seen: in the Swedish television series, every plot seemed to end with the life of Wallander's daughter under threat; in the British television version, Kenneth Branagh played a man so washed out you could barely see him against the background. The Swedish films starring Rolf Lassgard, however, are much better. Lassgard brings the character believably and vibrantly to life, even if some of the plots are still frankly silly (this one, for example, features bombs detonated by pulse-meters). It's not 'The Killing', by any means; but by far the best of the Wallander adaptations.