The Snowman

If, during a snow-covered and frosty winter evening, you feel like you’d like to watch a thriller with a suitable atmosphere, go for anything except The Snowman. Watching completely unlikable heroes for two hours groping their way along the killer's trail in the midst of such a lacking plot would still be bearable if The Snowman did not have a scattered and incomprehensible storyline - the characters emerge and disappear again, confusing the audience, although despite the frankly erratic investigation it does not mean you could not have already figured out who the killer was from the start. Then there’s the ending, which is so chaotically edited you can’t possibly know what the hell is going on. It's hard to say where it all went so wrong. Tomas Alfredson, a once-promising director, probably got buried in the snow sometime during the past few years. (2021-02-15)

The chilling and bleak atmosphere is worth a million, Michael Fassbender is spot on (it only takes a moment to grasp where his Harry is – namely, at rock bottom), an interesting case, a very clever script, and Alfredson's exceptional direction. As in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the viewer is directly pushed to pay attention to details, to notice dialogue, to be constantly on alert... but there’s an important difference:in The Snowman, such attention does not reward you whatsoever in the end; on the contrary, it is meant to distract you with false clues, confuse you, and catch you out. And it succeeds, I have to say, to a tee. It's up to you to decide how much you want to blame the filmmakers. I thoroughly enjoyed the story (of which I haven't read the source material). ____ P.S. Marc Beltrami's soundtrack is definitely worth a separate listen. (2019-07-30)

This movie once again confirms that transferring a quality book onto the big screen is not so easy. At first glance, everything seemed pretty good. The cast with the lead Michael Fassbender is great. The man in the director’s seat is adequately Nordic. What else could you ask for? If only the screenplay was a bit more logical. This way I pretty much  watched this film without much interest, even though there was a number of really interesting actors. For example, Val Kilmer, whom I have not seen for a thousand years and I will not need to see him for another thousand years. Or J. K. Simmons, who was possibly just a decoration in the movie as I cannot recall him doing anything at all. Well, he actually did do something, he was taking creepy pictures of women on his phone and consequently the screenwriter did not even explain why. And that was the same with everything, the schmuck. It is crazy that the main character Harry Hole, played by Michael Fassbender, seems like he just had a lobotomy, so it feels like he isn’t investigating at all, plus, what is even worse, you way too often realize that he does not speak at all. The cynical bastard Hole, whom all the people who’ve read the book love for the endless bullshit he says, utters at maximum two sentences in a row in the film. How could that make me like him? And the investigation? Just tell me, all of you who haven’t read the book, what was Val Kilmer doing there at all? Or why were the murders committed? Was it obvious from that conclusion? I didn’t feel that way. Overall, a terribly badly filmed crime film that was meant to tell the best story of Harry Hole and, in my opinion, killed the whole series. I haven’t been as pissed off for a long time as I was in the case of this movie. One of the worst crime movies I’ve ever seen. If it weren’t for the beautiful Norwegian locations, I would have left the cinema in the middle of the screening like the Czech film critic Mirka Spáčilová. (2017-10-12)

The book The Snowman marked a certain turning point, during which the series began to be uncomfortably suggestive and the murderous scenes became so precise and terrifying that one would look over their shoulder at home, wondering if something bad was waiting for them in the corner. At the same time, it was the most cinematic installment of the series so far, offering a great thriller. However, my fear that the main guide to Oslo in winter could fail in motion picture format was confirmed. Harry Hole, the hero of my favorite crime series, has already experienced, endured, and drunk quite a lot at this point in his life and career. His depressive substrate is soaked with losses and dismal periods in both adulthood and childhood. The film presents us with Harry, who is just a drinker, and it is not clear whether it is due to his breakup or simply because he does not currently have anything to dig into at work. Both reasons seem quite trivial, so it is good that the first snow comes and with it the murders that everyone who has heard of Jon Nesbø's books eagerly awaits. This sets the stage for the investigation carousel, which nonetheless seems almost ridiculous. The main characters ask a few questions, spend a lot of time examining the background of the Winter Games in Norway, and try to unravel the past of several anonymously acting characters. The problem is that the suggestiveness has disappeared from the adaptation. Murders either happen off-screen or are completely uninteresting. The present and past storylines do not intersect in the end; on the contrary (and this is a criticism I cannot forgive), the trio of screenwriters decides to openly deviate from the original, turning a crucial subplot into a dragging dead end. Moreover, I still remember how while reading, I thought I had the identity of the killer clear, but the author surprised me every time and played out the plot so far that three different characters could have been the culprit, and the twist in each case seemed similarly unquestionable. However, the film shoots down both incorrect theories and prematurely labels them as false, confusing the viewer perfectly and making some of the false clues almost insulting in retrospect. At this point, my initial disappointment is not far from anger, and I only give it a second star out of mercy because Charlotte Gainsbourg seems to have stepped out of my imagination as "my" Rachel, and because of the sad realization that in different hands, Michael Fassbender could truly be the perfect Harry. Nonetheless, I pray that the escalation towards an even more intense The Leopard hinted at in the finale does not come to pass. (2017-10-23)

What a disaster. I have no idea why the creators decided to introduce Harry Hole to the audience through an adaptation of the sixth part of the book series. I don't know what someone who has never read the series can take away from the film, as it contains a lot of references to the previous storyline which isn’t part of the film. The film itself didn't make much sense to me, regardless of having read the books. The filmmakers made such a mess of the original story that I’m not sure why the murders were so complicated, and most of all, why J.K. Simmons agreed to take part in it. (2018-03-07)