The Hypnotist/Hypnotisören (2012) - Hallström returns to the fatherland with thriller turkey

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Uncomfortably staring stars with bluish faces make up this poster for Lasse Hallström's The Hypnotist

A basketball trainer and an entire family have been stabbed to death: Only a big lad survives - but in a coma - and a hypnotist attempts to get answers from him.

 

The Hypnotist is written by Paolo Vacirca (Feed (2022)), with co-writer/director Lasse Hallström (En Kille och en Tjej (1975)) contributing story elements, adapted from Lars Kepler's (Stalker (2014)) same-titled 2009 novel.

Completely incompetent as a thriller, The Hypnotist is an assembly line 'Nordic noir' that also rests on a very dubious story. As seen before the Swedish setting has been robbed of almost all color and humor, and instead Mikael Persbrandt (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)) here walks around and looks like a middle-age crisis-hit man with a bad case of hangover, who hypnotizes people. Lena Olin (Vinyl (2016, TV-series)) plays one of the film's snapping, commanding, sour females.

Violent but unexciting, the film has desperately dull relationship scenes, crisis of confidence scenes, crying children and general discouragement, darkness and ugly settings. Suddenly near the end a more dramatic action suspense is erected out on the ice (literally) but it is hopeless. The Hypnotist is a toothache-reminiscent torment of a film.

 

Related post:
 

Lasse Hallström: Chocolat (2000) - Delicious pairing in spite of Hallström's ghastly taste

 

Here is a video from a press conference for the film

 

Cost: 61 mil. SEK, approximately 5.91 mil. $

Box office: 7.1 mil. $

= Big flop (returned 1.20 times its cost)

[The Hypnotist was released 28 September (Sweden) and runs 122 minutes. Shooting took place from January - March 2012 in Sweden, including in Stockholm, and in Prague, Czech Republic. The film opened #1 to a 974k $ first weekend in Sweden, where it remained for another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#3), grossing 3.8 mil. $ (53.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Denmark with 916k $ (12.9 %) and Spain with 646k $ (9.1 %). The film was only shown at a couple of film festivals in North America. It was chosen as Sweden's Oscar entry of the year but went without nomination. Hallström returned with Safe Haven (2013). Persbrandt returned in Mig Äger Ingen (2013); Tobias Zilliacus (Beck (2018, TV-series)) in 7 TV and short credits prior to his theatrical return in Onnelin ja Annelin talvi (2015); and Olin in Night Train to Lisbon (2013). 8.4k+ IMDb users have given The Hypnotist a 5.6/10 average rating.]

 

What do you think of The Hypnotist? 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) - Fincher's Nordic noir is technically astute but overlong and redundant

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1 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Score: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross (lost to Cliff Martinez for Drive)

The slick, black and white poster for David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

QUICK REVIEW:

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist has to leave his magazine workplace in Stockholm due to a libel case and finds an interesting freelance job in working with a younger female hacker at searching out the fate of a teenage girl, who disappeared into thin air 40 years ago.

Following the excellent Scandinavian adaptation of Stieg Larsson's 2005 bestselling novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/Män Som Hatar Kvinnor, the first in his Millennium trilogy, Niels Arden Oplev's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (2009), it is impossible not to view this second adaptation just two years later by great Denver-born director David Fincher (Zodiac (2007)) as redundant.
Daniel Craig (The Golden Compass (2007)) and particularly Oscar-nominated Rooney Mara (Side Effects (2013)) as cool hacker Lisbeth Salander give outstanding performances, while Stellan Skarsgaard (Breaking the Waves (1996)) plays his Martin character a bit too pleasantly.
Fincher's visual flair is unmistakable, realized in fine, Oscar-nominated cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth (Down with Love (2003)), and especially the car scenes are handsomely shot. The score by Trent Reznor (The Social Network (2010)) and Atticus Ross (Blackhat (2015)) is quivering in its vivaciousness. The Oscar-winning, stressful editing by Kirk Baxter (Gone Girl (2014)) and Angus Wall (Panic Room (2002)) gives the film an impression of constant development, although the plot is stretched out on a playtime (158 minutes) which is too long, and we for instance have to watch what must nearly be an unequaled amount of cigarettes get lit. In Steve Zaillian's (American Gangster (2007)) script, we are far across the one hour mark before the Blomkvist and Salander plot-lines collide, which is far too long. After the climax, the makers also go to great lengths in order to try to weave the Wennerström plot to an end.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an alright film, but a far cry from the lean thrills of the first adaptation.

Related review:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (2009) - An exciting adult ride in sadism and mystery from cold cold Sweden 

Watch the admittedly bold and awesome trailer for the film here

Cost: 90 mil. $
Box office: 232.6 mil. $
= Even Steven
[Dragon Tattoo's development began in 2009, unrelated to the Scandinavian film, and it was shot in September - December 2010 on location in Sweden, the UK and US. It opened to great reviews and a 21 mil. $ first domestic weekend. It grossed 102.5 mil. $ (44 % of the total gross) in North America. It went unreleased in India and Vietnam due to the strict censorship in those countries. Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK (18.7 mil. $) and Japan (15.8 mil. $). The film has made an additional 22.1 mil. $ on DVD/Bluray. It was 5 time Oscar-nominated; for Actress (Mara), Cinematography, Editing (won), Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is 86 % certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 7.6 critical average. There is still talk of Fincher directing the second and third book in the trilogy as well, although it will likely never happen in my opinion.]

What do you think of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?
If you have read the book(s) and/or seen the Scandinavian film(s), please make your verdicts known

Headhunters/Hodejegerne (2011) - Norwegian craftsman Tyldum's thriller springboard

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The slick, original poster for Morten Tyldum's Headhunters

QUICK REVIEW:

Roger is just 1.68 meters tall; he cheats and steals art pieces, beside his headhunting job, to fund his consumerist high-life. A candidate for a job owns an expensive painting that Roger now decides to steal. But this candidate is more dangerous than expected.

Headhunters is an exciting and handsomely produced romantic action thriller, based on Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø's (The Leopard/Panserhjerte (2011)) 2008 novel of the same name.
Once the hunt really gets started, the film gets unnecessarily gross. And the girlfriend's loyalty throughout the film is more than a little incredible. But Headhunters is still a very finely chiseled thriller with a somewhat surprising ending, SPOILER in which Roger leaves 'the game'.
It is written by Ulf Ryberg (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest/Luftslottet som Sprängdes (2009)) and Lars Gudmestad (The Orheim Company/Kompani Orheim (2012)) and directed by Norwegian shooting star director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game (2014)), who is now in pre-production with a thriller, Pattern Recognition, and a supernatural series, Counterpart.

Related review:

Morten Tyldum: The Imitation Game (2014) - Great Cumberbatch, good movie

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Morten Tyldum's Headhunters

Watch the English-subtitled trailer for the film here

Cost: 30 mil. NOK. (around 4 mil. $)
Box office: 15.3 mil. $
= Big hit
[Headhunters is the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all time, (although a Swedish-Danish-Norwegian-German co-production, it is mostly a Norwegian film.) It was a big hit in Norway, where 557k paid admission. It has gotten great reviews and several award nominations and a few wins. It made 1.1 mil. $ (7 % of the total gross) in the US.]

What do you think of Headhunters?

The Keeper of Lost Causes/Kvinden i Buret (2013) or, Grumpy and Ethnic Find a Woman in a Pressure Chamber

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Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Fares Fares stare down at Denmark's underbelly on this heavily animated poster for Mikkel Nørgaard's The Keeper of Lost Causes

A rebel murder detective gets send down into the basement of the police HQ with some old, unsolved cases and a friendly immigrant cop, and they go after a case of a woman who has been missing for 5 years, who is said to have committed suicide.

Keeper is a dead movie, an exercise in form and fixed ideas, nurtured out of the European film support system as a Danish-Swedish-German co-production. It hasn't an ounce of personality behind it, no soul or meaning or ideas; The Keeper of Lost Causes is sheer Nordic noir surface.
Nikolaj Lie Kaas (The Green Butchers/De Grønne Slagtere (2003)) and Fares Fares (Jalla! Jalla! (2000)) are agreeable as the two partners, and technically, Keeper is a neat film.
But the script, written by Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair/En Kongelig Affære (2012)), based on the first 'Department Q' crime novel by bestselling Jussi Adler-Olsen (Fasandræberne (2008)), ends prematurely, and the psychology, which 'explains' the killer's motivation, is wholly unconvincing and almost ridiculous. In addition, the cage of the film's title (the original Danish title translates to The Woman in the Cage) turns out to be a pressure chamber, which is not a cage, really, and the scenes in there aren't dramatically exciting in any way.
The Keeper of Lost Causes is, in short, a bad film.
It is directed by Mikkel Nørgaard (Klown/Klovn - the Movie (2010)). 

Related posts:

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch the trailer with English subtitles here

Cost: 6.6 mil. $ (39 mil. Danish kr.)
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown
[Keeper did get more than 700,000 to buy tickets for it in Denmark alone, but, reportedly, more than half of them through Biografklub Danmark (a cinema club), meaning that they only paid half prize. Though the number makes it a success in the Danish context, it is most likely still a financial failure due to its relatively high budget.]

What do you think of The Keeper of Lost Causes?
If you have seen the sequel, Fasandræberne (2014) (in Danish cinemas right now), how was it?