4 out of 5

Directed by: Peter Lindmark

Keepin’ it in the family, Johan.  Slick.

When we’re a bit into Teysti Diplomati – a pretty well-seeded cross between a standalone JF flick and one that deals with the whole Seth Rydell / internal traitor plotline – Johan sees a woman who appeared in the opening setup sequence and clearly recognizes her.  That’s not so uncommon for Falky, or the type of casual world-building creator Anders Nilsson and crew normally get up to.  But later, when he gets the chance to speak with her and its mentioned they used to work security together, well, fair enough for plot justifications, but waitaminute – didn’t we see a Falk film where he worked for a security firm?

Indeed, 15 (!) films ago in Falk 2 – Executive Protection – he worked security with Pernilla, played by Alexandra Rapaport, then and in this film.  Executive Protection also had a second unit director name Peter Lindmark, who, lo, is our director here.  And with Niklas (Alexander Karim) returning to a rousing chorus of “get back to work” from his reunited-with teammates, Nilsson, Eklund and crew have again sold us on their little universe, and I do think it’s credit to this “in house” mentality that’s allowed the crew to keep things flexible but consistent.

Tysti is a little wayward in putting its pieces together, to the extent that an hour in its still unclear what we’re going to focus on: Threats to Helen and Ola?  Sophie and Seth’s lightly violently flirtatious relationship?  Seth’s double/triple/infinite-crosses?  Or the intro’d angle of Pernilla’s job-gone-wrong?  (Had I been thinking, I probably should have bet on the intro.)  And so away we go, into, as ever, surprisingly escalating events that somehow evolve into a terrorist plot and diplomats and kung -fu.

As a director, Lindmark is pretty standard – near flat – rendering this closer to a TV movie vibe, but the dialogue feels naturalistic, so things move along well enough.

The networking of plots feels weird at first, but they do end up feeding into each other well, avoiding the “side movie” tag some of these flicks engender.  But overall, it’s the wholly developed world that makes this work, and has allowed us to appreciate why GSI and Helen can’t seem to get enough of this fairly unremarkable cop liaison, Mr. Falk.