Annika Bengtzon: Crime Reporter - The Red Wolf (2012)

That was an excellent one.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The film in question follows the footsteps of several famous Scandinavian crime dramas with "feminine approach", i.e. the leading character is a strong woman who does well in masculine environment or even outperforms her associates. Usually they are based on book by female authors, and topics deal with "softer" values rather than harsh and nasty felonies. Similar to e.g. Dicte, Annika Bengtzon is a journalist, but both the character itself and performance are somewhat weaker than Iben Hjejle's Dicte; moreover, there are some sidelines not providing additional value to the course of events (Annika's family problems), and the ones depicting evil are quite inexpressive. On the other hand, the plot itself is intriguing and as I did not figure out the real killer, I can give 7 overall points. And as it was my first familiarisation with Liza Marklund / Annika Bengtzon, I would not like to express blunt criticism, perhaps they did not just "open" fully to me at first sight.

We are given a recreation of a terrorist incident where a military plane is blown by persons obviously against the government. To aggravate things, no one of the perpetrators were ever caught. Now, after so many years, Benny, a journalist who never lost interest in the case, is the victim of a voluntary hit and run as he is getting home. Linus, a young man coming home from a hockey practice, witnesses in the shadows how the driver, not content with having struck the victim, returns and runs over his moribund body.Annika Bengtzon is asked to go to the town of Lulea to get information on the incident. She finds herself in a hostile environment, as it appears no one in town welcomes her presence. She gets lucky in finding Linus, the young hockey player, who tells her what he saw. Unknown to Linus, the same assassin, has a surprise for him, when the unknown man returns to take care of him.Annika's own life is in turmoil. Her domestic situation is a mess. To make matters worse, her own husband, Thomas begins an affair with a colleague, something Annika discovers in a strange fashion. At the office, her situation could not be more complicated with her boss. With the help of Bertil, Annika is able to go to the past and the activities of the Red Fox leftist gang. She will come close to being a casualty, but her intelligent approach to the case, helps her unmask the culprits, in a surprising ending.Directed with style by Agnetta Fagerstrom-Olsson, this series is a winner. Based on Liza Marklund's novels, the figure of an indefatigable newspaper reporter, Annika Bengtzon is a woman with high principles who believes in the pursuit of justice by the power given to her by the newspaper where she is clearly, the star. This episode was adapted by Bjorn Paqualin and Antonia Pyk. The casting of Malin Crepin is key to the success of this series. A lot of Swedish excellent players, many seen in other series, show up here to create an ensemble unit that probably made the director happy to rely on them to deliver.

I looked in here to get some clarification about the time line of the Red Wolf episode. In the office Annika was talking to Berit, one of the other reporters who was apparently an old-time lefty. Berit mentions she and a woman on the TV, perhaps the minister of culture, protested the Vietnam war together. But both the actress who plays Berit and the one who is the culture minister are too young to have been protesting the Vietnam war. The actress was ten years old in 1972, the last big year for protests.In another episode Annika recalls being nearly raped as a young girl. This is an unfortunate cliché, as it seems so many female detectives are survivors of rape. Most male detectives (on US TV at least) on the other hand are not only war veterans but also combat veterans. Both are unimaginative attempts to layer world-weariness onto characters who more likely have led ordinary comfortable suburban lives. I noticed in particular in TV series the Vietnam-vet trope was really stretched, giving detectives war cred who were too young to have been there. There was a period where it finally became too implausible, with detectives in their 30s, in the 1990s, being Vietnam vets, so they started making them be veterans of Grenada (!), and even Panama. Then the first Gulf War came along, and they could be veterans of that at least, even though it was a very brief war. Now with Iraq and Afghanistan police depts will be well stocked with the necessary gravitas that only combat experience can provide, for many years to come.The home life seems a cliché and predictable--the kids are tacked on. Would anyone notice if they were different from one episode to the next? You'd think the perennially put-upon spouse would have resigned himself to her schedule after all these years. And Annika's newsroom, with its "stop the presses"-type reporting seems an anachronism. No layoffs in this place! The gruff suspender-wearing editor is a pale copy of J. Jonah Jameson from the Spiderman comics of an earlier era.Still, I enjoy the show because the cinematography is beautiful, and it's nice to see the ridiculously glamorous Malin Crepin poking around in various interesting locations in Sweden, which we in the US don't often get to see.

The Red Wolf (2012) aka Den röda vargenPlot: A journalist is murdered in the frozen white landscape of a northern Swedish town. Annika Bengtzon, a reporter at a Stockholm-based tabloid, was planning to interview him about a long-ago attack against an isolated air base nearby, and now she suspects that his death is linked to that attack. Against the explicit orders of her boss, she begins to investigate the event, which is soon followed by a series of shocking murders. Annika knows the murders are connected. At the same time, she begins to suspect that her husband is hiding something, and nothing can counteract the loneliness that has crept into her life. Behind everything lurks the figure of the Red Wolf, a cold-blooded killer with the soul of a lover. In the end, she must discover the truth not only about the murders but also about the lies that are destroying her own family.