3 out of 5

Director: Charlotte Brändström

It feels like a bit too much of an ‘event’ to work as a standalone film, with nods to previous Falk movie characters and an over-arching sense of trying to wrap up enough loose ends to make continuing the series a choice and not a necessity, but ‘Kodnamn’ does get all of the core Falk elements right and resolves the long Seth / Frank saga (for now) with a satisfying but believable-cause-its-not-all-smiles ending.  It also boils to a typically awesome final few minutes that are enough to shatter the malaise of some of the plodding steps (and lack of a central focus, since this is a continuation both of last film and pieces from previous films) it takes to get there.

Picking up directly after the previous flick, the Estonians – floating around in various dealings in earlier Falks – have figured out that Frank is an informant and send out the hit squad.  When Frank goes on the run, Seth is next to be outed, only his involvement is to be used as leverage to capture who’s considered The Bigger Fish – Frank – and Seth must disseminate to his underworld cronies that Wagner’s a rat and he’ll pay mad dollars to the first who offs him.  Frank runs to the sorta’ retired Johan, Johan turns to GSI, and suddenly Frank and wife and son are being told that they’re not really going to get any financial support or a chance at a real life, whoops.  The cards get shuffled for a half hour or so to show just how info on the informants was released, and this is where the film feels most Falky, in laying bare the stupid politics that make things like this a reality.  But this is cut in with scenes of the Estonians tracking down and threatening friends and family and those moments just don’t really work, the group coming across as vague bogeymen in vans.  Director Brändström also has a fairly heavy hand with things, lacking the natural action of the Holm entries or the laid back tone of Anders’, and this adds to the somewhat forced feeling of the first hour.  This is especially apparent when Frank’s brother is kidnapped and then told to deliver a message to Frank – the whole scene is played out with mass dramatics and amounts to nothing much.

Joel Kinnaman is unfortunately only given one emotion to play in the flick – emotionally distraught – which he does well but the series fares better when we’re allowed some subtleties.  Eklund delivers, though, as Johan struggles with how to respond to the situation, knowing his responsibility in getting Frank involved, but not really police at the moment…  And though Seth’s part in things is fairly in and out, his epilogue is pretty excellent.

Berndt Nilsson follows his trend of evolving the Falk themes and again delivers some inspired variations that help to keep things moving when the director seems uncertain of what tone to use.

Not the best of the series, and the first real ‘sequel’ feeling one since it can’t stand on its own, but making this a successful conclusion to so many plotlines was going to be difficult and on the whole, ‘Kodnamn Lisa’ gives us most of what we could ask for.