3 out of 5

Director: Anders Nilsson

It lacks some of the momentum of the previous Johan Falk film – Noll Tolerans – thanks to a plot that continually circles around our lead instead of focusing on him, but Livvakterna (‘Executive Protection’) maintains the main qualities of that film that made it unusually solid and humble at the same time.  Director Anders Nilsson captures his script with assurance, with a bit more grit and confidence surrounding the gunplay and action.  Though his part in the overall storyline is a bit wayward, Jakob Eklund also more fully sinks into his Johan role, working with Nilsson’s writing – again straight-forward genre but with a very un-American lack of flashbacks and explanation – to make Falk into a fascinating, troubled character.

So Falk’s attending the funeral of his surrogate father (another little hint in the Falk mix – we’re told his parents weren’t around but it’s not lingered upon) when the husband of his ex-wife’s sister mentions some business problems he’s been having: that after hiring a security company to deal with a blackmailer, the security company flip-flops and ends up becoming, basically, another blackmailer.  The issue, though, is that it’s done through business and unprovable threats – violence is being committed, but on paper, it just looks like he needs to pay this company’s bills.  Johan suggests the police, but this keeps getting waived off – that the police won’t do anything because it appears above board.  Which splinters off into the two main reasons the film has trouble finding its footing – first, Johan aims the man toward another security company, but one staffed by people he’s worked with in the past.  While Falk is roped in to helping the company, we’re given several more characters with their own dramas (interesting ones – including a pretty minor plot point that’s leveraged to devastating effect for the ending) and there’s just the sense that Johan is sort of on the sidelines.  Of course, he’s intimately involved when the action goes down, but it’s the direct tie to the plot motivations that’s lacking.  Secondly, the script seems to be making some points about the lack of police presence in certain areas for certain kinds of crimes, but the bad guy shoots a whole bunch of people in the opening scene.  …This won’t draw some attention?  So when the theatrics of kidnapping and strapping bombs to people comes into play, it seems a bit more notable than business back-dealings, and it muddles the core mechanic of the flick and causes it to drop into a plodding pace at certain moments while it gathers its story.

But those moments aside, its another honest-to-goodness enjoyable film, with those odd sparkling moments that just make it sing a bit more true than most genre bits.  Like that bomb.  It’s an easy plot device, but time is taken to detail how the bomb functions, and it makes it come across as a legit device and not just like a Bond machine or something.  Also, the addition of further darkness and dissociativeness to Falk makes him that much more dynamic.  Once again, looking forward to the next entry.