**Contains Spoilers**
I rated this film a little lower than the movie review sites and user ratings on
IMDB. The film suffers from two problems. First problem: It is a basic, very obvious thriller movie. In the beginning of the movie, when a character tells you, "One of these persons in the picture killed her". And the movie leads towards one of the people actually killing that person. Who cares, you already know what is going to happen. And there are only two or three suspects. So, the thriller aspect of the movie isn't that interesting. It is unfortunate that they spent all of this energy to build up the suspense of the potential killer, when we already know it is either that guy, that guy or that guy. And to be honest, the older killers aren't even that interesting anyway. I don't care if any of them were the killers. They were Nazi's and/or Nazi sympathizers. So, the thriller elements in the movie weren't that interesting to me.
Second point: Outward displays of graphic misogyny. I don't know if the writer hated women or was a passionate fighter for the female cause. Either way, women are treated like crap in this movie. There are a couple of graphic rape scenes. So graphic, it took me a hour into the movie to even get the rape scenes out of my head. There is female and male rape. If you wanted to describe the overall theme of the movie. The theme is misogyny. The killer (shocker) kills women and the main female character was apparently raped in her past and hates women. And is continually treated like crap by other men.
So there are two issues; obvious ending and misogyny. Despite those issues, the movie could be one of the best pictures of the year. It has great direction and style. I really liked the main male character and the actresses. And wow on the actress. I hope Noomi Rapace gets every international movie award you can give out. Yea, she was the girl that was raped. She will probably get an Oscar or some award. Everything is great up to a point. I wish there was more conspiracy involved. The main character sleuths work hard at their case. But, I didn't really care about the case. And who knows, maybe the book did a better job at making us away of severity of their crimes. The movie didn't do that. You get the impression that something is going on and it is bad, but you don't feel the sense that it is a major conspiracy.
"Oh, he is a crazy, serial killer. Oh, OK. Well just arrest him and be done with. And you might save some time and just arrest all of them and search their houses. Problem solved".
In Summary: Great direction, great setting and mood. Great acting. Great build up. And overall a good movie. But there was a little bit too much man on woman violence for me and I bet the plot from the book was dumbed down too much for the movie. Either way, it probably will beat out most Hollywood movies this year.
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