2 out of 5

Director: Daniel Lind Lagerlöf

So this was the first Johan movie that felt rather phoned in, which I guess isn’t bad for a series 8 flicks deep and into DTV by this point.  And it’s not bad, just standard, and sacrifices it’s generally lean presentation for some more typical plotting maneuvers.  It reminded me of the second entry, Livvakterna, in the sense that Johan seemed included as an afterthought and isn’t directly needed to move the plot along – he’s just a member of GSI, Sweden’s special police force, and various Falk faces pop in and out but otherwise this could’ve been / might be a vehicle for GSI member Lasse – Henrik Norlén – since he takes over the rogue role for the film and is the main perpetrator of events.  The Johan films have tapered off into focusing on less large-scale crimes, but there’s still a sense of importance to them, and that’s completely lost on this one.  The structure follows of picking up while our team is watching people involved in the crime-of-the-movie and figuring out how to properly politically make an arrest, but the crime – a prostitution ring, Polish girls shuttled into town by a German and handled by two Swedes – never gets off the ground, and the bad guys don’t get enough screen-chewing to really feel too threatening.  The movie is also markedly more television / budget feeling than before.  Sure, things have been pared down along the way, but this was our first entry by a team unlinked to series creator Anders Nilsson, and the shift in scripting toward typical movie maneuvers and the incredibly static camera that only knows how to pan and – perhaps for budget reasons, to take advantage of a one camera setup – in one instance, Johan moves around the offices while the camera bumped up to keep him in frame, and then swivels as the group walks into the room…  There can be art or grace with any style of course, but it doesn’t feel framed so much as – where can we do all this in one shot and move on?

So Johan tries to set up the green Lasse as a handler for one of the girls in the ring and the job gets bungled, Lasse getting emotionally attached.  GSI’s head is out on paternity leave and Johan has authority issues with the second-in-command, Sophie, which could be part of the bigger picture of Johan’s difficulty in dealing with women… but we’re not going to deal with much of that here, tossing one scene in with Johan’s lady, Helen, in the background, one clipped conversation with his on-again off-again affair, one “we’re quits” conversation with Johan’s crime contact, Frank… these elements are the norm by now, but previous entries had used them to explore, minorly but intelligently, aspects of Johan’s worldview, and here they seem just like filler.

The next entry sees the return of the same director but regular Johan writer Fredrik T. Olsson (this entry was handled by Stefan Karlsson), so here’s hoping things get back to the higher-than-average bar of this series.