False Trail (2011)

A Swedish schoolgirl has been killed, and she's just good looking enough to make people care. Who is the culprit? Nobody knows. Could it be the local dodgy geezer? Quite possibly, but also possibly not. Whatever the case, the authorities are convinced of his guilt.Can Detective Erik Bäckström reach the truth of this mystery before the police send an innocent man to prison? Will Niklas finally give up his obsession? Who cleaned out the hunting cottage of the local police chief? Why is Torsten such a dick?I rate Jägarna II at 26.64 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a chilling 8/10 on IMDB.

After watching the very interesting 2017 doc Out of Thin Air,I started thinking about watching a new title from the Nordic Noir genre. Picking up a newspaper on the way back home,I was excited to spot that a Nordic Noir I've read a lot about was to be shown,which led to me locating the true trail.The plot:Leaving the police after a fellow officer killed himself over a case he was investigating, Erik Bäckström is forced to return in order to help find missing Elin Ledin. Being more of a forensic investigator, Bäckström finds himself uncomfortable around the aggressive style of policing officer Torsten. Whilst being taken out on a hunting trip by Torsten, reports come in that Ledin's body dissected body has been found in the woods they are going to. As the cops pat each other on the back, Bäckström begins suspecting that Torsten has a connection to the murder.View on the film:With one of the main themes of the genre being the police taking on the corrupt business elite, the screenplay by Stefan Thunberg & Björn Carlström give this staple of Nordic Noir a bare-knuckle twist,by making the police themselves be corrupt. Smartly limiting links to the first film to brief mentions that add depth to Bäckström's coming out of the wilderness,the writers make Torsten an attention-grabbing psychopath,whose swagger with a badge can't stop Bäckström chipping away at a macabre murder mystery, or the writers unveil disturbing family secrets hidden in Nordic Noir shadows.Confronting everyone against director Kjell Sundvall and cinematographer Jallo Faber rural coloured backwoods, Peter Stormare fires on all cylinders as Torsten, with Stormare making him a snarling rogue,whose rapid-fire mouth is matched by his casual use of brutal violence. Haunted by his last case, Rolf Lassgård gives a great, worn-down performance as Bäckström, who lashes out at the frustrations of the jammed mechanics that is the police, but is balanced out by Lassgård with a Noir loner single mindedness to uncover the true trail.

FALSE TRAIL (aka HUNTERS 2) is a Swedish cop film set in the redneck- like rural part of the country where bad rock music, check shirts and alcoholism are the height of cool. When a girl is murdered a city cop from Stockholm is sent back to his rural home, where it turns out that his (widowed) sister is law is married to the local top-cop, who also happens to be city cop's prime suspect. Things are kept nicely murky for quite a while, with the protagonist's suspicions often seeming more like prejudice than fact, as the investigation twists and turns. At a certain point it becomes not so much a question of whodunnit but rather of whether the protagonist can actually pin the murder on the criminal as they brilliantly cover their tracks. Similar to many other Scandi films, this is as much a drama as a genre film, with it offering a compellingly brutal portrayal of controlling manhood. The countryside is gorgeously shot, it's packed with good actors (Stomare's beard deserves its own credit), the rural setting is unusual and atmospheric, and it slowly builds up the pace until it comes to a shatteringly savage Cain-and-Abel type finale in the woods.

Sundvall's movies often deal with the same theme: A lone person fighting against an evil establishment. Nevertheless, he always succeeds in making great movies. This movie, too, was very exciting and very intense. It was even more intense then Jägarna 1, its predecessor. The acting was first- rate. Especially Lassgård and Stormare did absolutely magnificent jobs.The nature sceneries were great to watch, too, especially for me who have never yet seen that part of Sweden or Finland.I'm most likely going to buy this one when it is (very soon) released on DVD and blu-ray.