THRILLER; 1hr 30min (Swedish with subtitles)
STARRING: Malin Crépin, Antje Traue, Richard Ulfsäter, Anna von Rosen, Jackie Jakubowski
Gagged: Crépin
Annika Bengtzon (Crépin) is a Stockholm newspaper crime reporter with a disapproving husband (Ulfsäter) and two young children. Her delicate prettiness belies her can-and-will-do attitude, but a fat lot of good that does her when her coverage of the prestigious Nobel Banquet is rudely interrupted by the murder of the Nobel Chair (von Rosen) and the injuring of the controversial stem-cell researcher who was awarded the prize (Jakubowski). With the femme fatale who fired the shots (Traue) on the loose, the story has impressive legs — although not for Annika, alas; as a key witness, she’s chafing under a gag order.
Undaunted, the newshound continues to dig, her businesslike persistence setting the no-nonsense tone of this brisk procedural, adapted from crime writer Liza Marklund’s 2006 novel, produced by the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo mob and directed by Peter Flinth, who isn’t a man given to poetic flourishes. He keeps a disciplined grip on the sticky situation all the same: Ms Bengtzon may look angelic but she’s a terrier through and through, whether defending her eight-year-old son against bullying or striding gamely in where most angels would flatly refuse to tread.
