2 out of 5

Director: Adrian Shergold

So I was only encouraged to watched this after finishing the US TV update of it (expanding this 2 hr-ish mini into 10 episodes).  While I think I’m fairly good at separating remakes from originals, it’s very hard not to compare and contrast the two experiences, as they’re both incredibly fractured individually…  The US version actually edges this out, but that’s due mostly to having more room for some character development, which also led to the downside of the series, which was filling up some excess space with… excess.  So even seeding out the interesting bits of both doesn’t necessarily add up to a perfect whole.  But I must credit whomever saw the glimmer in this dour drama to expand upon it.  Admittedly, there is an incredibly badass hitch at the crux of both versions.  Namely: how do you solve a case when you know you’re the perpetrator?  Mark Strong plays Frank Agnew, a detective urged to assist in the murder of abusive and crooked cop Brendan McCann by fellow officer Joe Geddes (Brian McCardie).  Agnew is known as a pretty reliable cop, so why get involved?

Because of a girl.

The intelligence of the structure of Low Winter Sun is to present twists in a completely unexpected fashion.  ‘Well, of course, they’re twists,’ you remark, but that’s the opposite of how I mean – the beats through which we expect to be served plot points are not followed.  It’s an interesting tactic, and it all circles around that main conceit that, when McCann’s body is discovered and Internal Affairs (‘Complaints’ in the UK) is involved and suddenly there’s a headless body found in McCann’s trunk, Agnew is assigned as lead detective to straighten it all out.  So while he knows the endpoint of the puzzle, he keeps discovering new details that suggest that he might’ve been led to participate in the crime to accomplish other goals for other people than his own need for ‘revenge’ for his woman.  It is tricky as fuck to plot this, but writer Simon Donald finds his way through, even if matters wrap up – not neatly, exactly, but the ending just sort of falls into place as opposed to the cluster fuck of double-crosses that seems to be piling up.

And yet, it’s hard to get into Low Winter Sun.  They do a fair job of making Agnew initially sympathetic by opening the story with him in tears.  This is a prelude to several incredibly violent acts that he’ll commit besides the murder; we come to see Frank as rather unstable, quick to anger.  But there’s not enough time to turn this into an arc of an untrustworthy ‘narrator’, so we must take Frank at his word regarding certain matters and the story feels shaky due to this.  And Geddes is a potentially interestingly mixed up man as well, but when we’re just getting into an interesting clash between he and Frank, he exits the story in a big way, uncomfortably shuffling back into frame in part two just to distract us.  He still has a role to play, and a major one, but the way his presence ends up being used, it again makes for a difficult syncing of what we’re seeing on screen vs. our feelings toward the character.  Extend this half-in half-out to most of the other parts – our ‘Complaints’ man, the chief, an oddly stuck in office romance between two side characters… ‘Low Winter Sun’ is basically confused as to whether it wants to be a character piece or crime drama, and 2 hours is simply not enough to do both effectively.

The ominous, driving score by Martin Phipps is quite good, and Ulf Brantås’ cinematography nails the chill suggested by the title.  But whoever decided on the framing and visual pacing – we’ll look to director Shergold – often mismatches beats, and the pacing also staggers between part 1 and 2.  Episode 1 is a full throttle rush as Agnew and Geddes struggle to put their pieces where they want them.  For some of these moments, the camera hovers at a discomfiting angle and lets the actors do their thing.  This works perfectly to nail the strangling feeling of being caught up in a lie.  But at other points the view gets a bit too ‘artsy’ to mesh with harsh feel of the script, and Agnew’s character has a tendency to go running – literally running – when he latches onto a lead of some type, and it’s just an odd character tough that’s almost laughable.  Part 2, for whatever reason, shifts over to more plodding passages, as though the story was too long for the first episode but not fully long enough for two, so just… let some scenes… drag on…

And then that ending.  Let’s stomp on the viewer for two hours and then just end with a shrug.  Sure.

Basically, part one has a lot going for it that runs into some dead ends in part two.

Now I’ve already prattled on a bit too long to want to do a full US / UK comparison, but here are some highlights for your highlight loving motherfuckers:

-The US drug-running plot was the most useless aspect of the show… and surprise, none of that appears in the UK version.

-The UK does some cleverness with the chopped up body that I’m surprised they didn’t play with in the US.

-The UK versions Frank / Joe blind is a little less believable in how long its pulled off vs the US version.

-The IA dude in the US was madly superior – good call to make him frightening and legit and slimy.

-Joe Geddes is horribly unrelatable in both versions.  Some balance between the fear and confidence of both characters would be perfect.

-Mark Strong took the opportunity to whip Frank Agnew into a brilliantly twisted character in the remake, but the opening of the UK series would’ve helped to make the US version a bit easier to get into.  The US series goes brutal immediately.

-Excellent changes to the girlfriend storyline.  Such a wasted beat in the UK story.

Boom bip.  To the bank.  And more.  But now you have something to tell your Low Winter Sun friends, at least.