Wooden, linear yet somewhat better than the average Swedish mystery film

Rating: 3/10 (23 August 2009)

Although this is much better than the usual slew of Swedish cinematic mysteries, a few queries must be made: why always inject the same actors in Swedish film? Why is their "acting" confined to existing, just like wooden objects - most notably Mikael Nyqvist - and not in an interesting IKEA way, even? Why is women still being portrayed as in this film? The low-down of the film is this: a journalist is sentenced to jail for slander, but gets a job from the very rich head of a corporation: find his niece. At the same time, a goth tries to make her way by digging up info on people for magazines, while combatting her demons from the past, which means she has to deal with an abusive counsellor which is obligatory if she's not to be "shipped off to the mental institution, and we wouldn't want that now, would we?". Seems to me that in the world of film-making - largely controlled by older men - girls who are individuals, who refuse to conform and basically do things the way that men go about (unpunished) get what this girl gets in the film. All the while, she gets entangled with said journalist and they try to solve the case together. I'm told the books are very well-written, but watching this is like watching the husk of same old Swedish mystery film of the past years re-juvenating for yet another Swedish mystery film. With the same actors. And their same old wooden selves.