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"Wallander" Innan frosten (2005)


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9 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Before the frost there was a murder...., 26 January 2005
9/10
Author: kai81 from Helsinki, Finland

The expectations were high for the new Wallander series. The most expensive Scandinavian production - 13 films in total - and a conscious change of style to the previously filmed Wallander films. The first one in the series, Innan frosten, is the only one of the new stories to be based on a book by Henning Mankell. The other 12 are brand new stories, written especially for the films. It is also the first time Rolf Lassgård doesn't play the role of Kurt Wallander, he is replaced here by Krister Henriksson. Despite some of the negative reviews it has received in Sweden, in Finland it has been well accepted. After having seen Innan frosten in its first week in cinemas I am very pleased with the result.

Innan frosten, or Wallander - Innan frosten as it's named in the opening titles, tells the story of a murder investigation in which detective Kurt Wallander (Krister Henriksson, "Reconstruction") tracks down a sadistic killer that seems to have connections to a religious sect. These are people that are ready to burn a flock of swans to death just to get a vignette on their web site, not to mention what they are willing to do to those that are not true believers. To make matters worse for Wallander, his daughter Linda (Johanna Sällström, "Under ytan") graduates from the Police Academy and joins the Ystad police force. Already on her first day she puts herself in a situation that could be life-threatening, something that her father isn't very thrilled about. In resolving the crime they are joined by the new recruit from Stockholm, Stefan Lindman (Ola Rapace, "Tillsammans"), who was the lead character in Danslärarnes återkomst (The Return of the Dancing Master), an another Mankell bestseller.

I think the producers made a terrific choice with casting Krister Henriksson in the role of Wallander. In this story Wallander has lost weight, tries to live better (despite the occasional glass of whiskey) and really tries to be more of a father to his daughter than he's been before. Wallander is older, more calmer and very much different than he's been in the previous films, so I don't think that Lassgård would've done as a good job as Henriksson. Also, the change of the visual output is more like the Beck films with Peter Haber, with the exception of dark city landscapes being replaced by the countryside nature of Ystad.

Wallander - Innan frosten is a well made and very entertaining thriller that keeps you interested throughout the story, although that is something you by now expect from Swedish thrillers. The cast is excellent and live up to their characters. Krister Henriksson's portrayal of Wallander is very solid, and gives high hopes for the ones yet to come. Johanna Sällström is also very reliable as Linda, who might be less experienced but even more eager than most of her colleagues. Of the supporting cast Niklas Falk ("Så som i himmelen") stands out as the leader of the religious sect. His character believes in the holy word, but seems to have a heart of darkness inside him.

Innan frosten (Before the Frost) is well worth to be seen. It's not a classic of its genre but the best of its kind at the moment.

**** 1/2 (4 1/2 out of 5)

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Disappointing, 5 February 2005
6/10
Author: atik10 from Finland

Despite a promising prelude, especially with the use of real(?) documentary footage, the movie fails to build on the good start. The old cliché of police movies; the troublesome relations of the father and the daughter, both working as cops in the same police station is just one example of how tedious the storyline is.

"Innan Frösten" seems like a quickly shot TV-episode. The characters lack depth and the story moves too fast.

I like the Wallander novels but this movie does not do any justice to the complex character of Kurt Wallander. I don't think that Krister Henriksson is at all that unsuitable for the role of Wallander, it's the lacking script that makes the legendary policeman look shallow.

Ola Norell on the other hand looks way too young to be Stefan Lindman, I'm not sure but I think this is because they wanted to create more electricity between Lindman and Linda Wallander, if that's the case it certainly did'nt work for me.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
A film I could easily recommend to watch, 13 October 2005
7/10
Author: nickesven2003 from Sweden

I was quite surprised to see some of the negative reviews of the film on this page. Not having read the book, I actually thought the film was very enjoyable on several levels: the father versus daughter relationship is entirely credible; the daughter versus old friends story; and finally the actual plot centered around the twisted sect. Seemingly unimportant information was picked up later in the film giving significance to details in a very clever way. The pace of the film is quite good, never a dull moment, suspense is OK if not at the highest level, acting is good to. I can agree with some of the reviewers that Kurt Wallander is a more complex character than what has been portrayed in this particular film, not to blame Krister Henriksson, the 90 minutes didn't allow it. Hopefully the whole palette of his personality will be exposed in the films that will follow. Overall, a film that I would easily recommend to rent or watch on TV.

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4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Not bad, but nothing special either, 23 January 2005
5/10
Author: IceaFrost from Sweden

I went to see this movie mainly because my father paid. I haven't read the book, so I didn't know the plot line before seeing it.

The beginning creates interest right away and after that it just rolls on. In into the story comes all the characters and the subplot (Linda's relation to her father) is quite cliché, but it becomes apparent that it is needed to help the story.

The story has a lot of loose ends, and a while in I didn't understand how some parts were connected to the others. In the end, most of these ends are tied together, but some are still strange and never gets a real explanation. Most of the parts that were meant to be scary, or at least raise the pulse of the audience wasn't that scary, as most things were quite predictable.

Anyway, I enjoyed this, they managed to tie most of the loose ends together, and it was a quite interesting story, but nothing I'd pay to see at the cinema.

5/10

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15 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
Horrible, 16 January 2005
2/10
Author: stensson from Stockholm, Sweden

This Swedish police movie contains everything that is bad in the genre and runs it once again, but in an almost amateurish way. If I say that the superintendent's daughter, with a fresh exam from the Police Academy, arrives at her father's police station, you know the rest. There are conflicts and cliché on cliché on cliché. After less than half an hour you know who've done the bad things and who will do it in the future. If you get frightened of the jump scenes, this must be your first action movie.

Krister Henriksson is far from the level of his predecessor in these films, Rolf Lassgård. Johanna Sällström fights hard against the script, but doesn't win the fight.

I thought Henning Mankell, the man behind the books about this superintendent working in a small Swedish town, was radical but he seems to be just "radical chic". Let's hope he gets a lot of money for lending his copper to this crap.

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2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Missing pages in director's book?, 29 June 2005
3/10
Author: kjepo from Sweden

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This was the second Wallander film I've seen. In the first one (Mannen som log), Rolf Lassgård did an admirable job of portraying Wallander, but I was mildly irritated when the film ended in the complete opposite way: the villain got away!

So I was hoping that the new project with 13 films would be more true to the books, but Noooo.

In this film (Innan frosten, eng. Before the frost) - why does the director or script writer change the story so radically, and add stuff that wasn't in Mankell's book? The "new" material is so bad, almost to the point of embarrassing.

I'd be hard pushed to see another one in this series.

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4 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Dreadful, 17 January 2006
1/10
Author: pinegard from Sweden

This is the first movie in the new Wallanderseries and is based on the book with the same name. And it went completely wrong.The policemen/woman in this film behaves like morons and I can't understand how they did make it trough police academy. Embarrassing mistakes and on top of it all a ridiculous plot aiming to please some minorities in society (they can'not have gained anything by this) I don't blame the actors or the photo - but everything else stinks! I feel also there is a lack of flow in this picture that easily could have been avoided by lengthening/cutting i the right places. Next episodes must be far superior if Í'm going to watch this series.

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4 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Quite good thriller, 14 January 2005
7/10
Author: donfalcon from Lund, Sweden

I went to see this movie with my girlfriend without having read the book (or any books from the author) before. Basically, I knew nothing about the characters and the story, which usually is a good thing. I won't reveal any details since it would ruin the movie.

The main characters are a father and daughter; the first a veteran cop and the other a newly graduated cop. Despite problems within the family, they must work together to solve a series of crimes, which all seem twisted and religious.

The character build-up was OK, and the first 3/4 of the movie was actually surprisingly good. The plot was quite good, with some nice twists. The end has some flaws which in my opinion brings the grade down a notch.

Conclusion: a better-than-average Swedish thriller with some suspenseful and thrilling parts, but with a so-so ending. Grade: 3.5/5.

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0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Ambitious yet mixed blessing, 18 September 2008
7/10
Author: suchenwi (suchenwi@o2online.de) from Konstanz, Germany

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This TV movie, "pilot" of the Wallander series, came on DVD with German Vanity Fair, 18 Sep 2008. I found it quite intense in some points, and questionable in others.

Good points first. This is "Wallander", but less Kurt than his daughter Linda (like the book, as far as Wikipedia tells - I only read Firewall). Conflict of generations is a natural consequence, and the father/child relation is reflected at least twice (the baby by artificial insemination, which later redoes Moses, and the unborn child in Anna, who again misses her long-lost father). Then we have the Christian fundamentalist sect, which uses terror (starting with setting swans afire) against what they consider sin: abortion, artificial insemination, gay marriage. A link to Jonestown is repeated multiple times, but wasn't so plausible to me.

And that leads us to more implausibilities. Coincidence just happens too often. Linda returns to Ystad, can't stay with her estranged pa, so moves in with Anna and meets the fatherless baby at a spoiled beach picknick. And gets to meet every point in this almost geometrical construction.

It somehow serves the story-line, but is it plausible to snipe-shoot the driver of a cruising van loaded with explosives? (The van stops nicely, ready for later timed explosion in open field.) I give this 7/10, partly because of nice Swedish details, and memorable scenes like the hanging in the church or the gay wedding, but at the end I'm not convinced - too much geometry, too little glimpses of reality... (there were some, like the stolen bike scene, but I'd wished for more.)

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0 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Pretty good, better than 5.3, 1 July 2005
7/10
Author: mnystedt

As I write this, the movie has a 5.3 out of 10 rating. I think it deserves better. I haven't read the book, but I've read some other Wallander books and seen some of the previous movies. Although I really like Lassgård as Wallander, Henriksson does a really good job and we should stay away from comparing them too much. They are different actors making their own interpretation of the role. Johanna Sällström does a good job as Wallander's daughter and there's a lot going on between them that I hope will get explored more in future movies. It's beautifully shot and generally speaking of pretty high production quality. Since they are doing 13 movies in pretty short time you could suspect it would come across as rushed and cheap, but I don't think that's the case with this one. Perhaps because it's the first and maybe it'll get worse as we go along. The supporting actors are of high caliber and do a good job. The story is a bit strange at times but they keep it together and going well and there's really no boring parts. So, in short, not the best Wallander-movie made, but I enjoyed it, and I think most other viewers will as well.

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