‘Detective Hole’ movie review: Jo Nesbo brings Harry Hole to Netflix in a moody adaptation that’s better than ‘The Snowman’

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Who’s ready for a dark journey into the mysterious recesses of Harry Hole?

Stop it.

Stop laughing.

Be an adult.

Like millions of Scandinavians, millions of fans of Scandinavian crime novels, and at least 17 fans of Michael Fassbender’s film Snowman We already know, of course, that the melancholy hero at the heart of Jo Nesbo’s Norwegian novels pronounces his name “HAR-ee Hoo-leh.” This won’t stop anyone from pointing and laughing every time a detective calls someone and reads their caller ID “Harry Hole.”

We are, in the end, only human.

Speaking of audio, Detective holeIt is based on nine episodes of the Nesbo series Devil staris set to stream on Netflix, which in this case looks like it should be pronounced “Ama-zon.” Sure, it’s a show on Netflix, but the setting Detective hole He would be more at home side by side Scarpetta and Bush and He crosses On Amazon, the beautifully produced semi-official home of grim procedural adaptations in which angry and traumatized detectives ignore their colleagues and generally accepted law enforcement ethics to stop mysterious serial killers before the latter always finds their next victim. Detective hole It’s a show so thoroughly Amazon-branded that its pilot concludes with the phrase, “This season continues.” Detective hole…” A suspenseful montage, something Amazon does often and Netflix rarely does.

Of course if Detective hole If it is on Amazon, it should be recalled slotWhich will confuse fans of Josh Brolin’s drama External scopeso it’s probably also a good thing that Netflix has stepped up to fill this gap in the market.

Quoted by Nesbo from The Fifth Harry Hole Mystery (Snowman was the seventh) Detective hole Filled with several episodes, the ending reaches a conclusion that falls somewhere between illogical and downright ridiculous. But along the way, there are several things that go well, including a thrilling central turn from Tobias Santelmann, a very serious turn from the ubiquitous Joel Kinnaman, and evocative photography in and around Oslo.

Look up “tortured detective” in the Norwegian dictionary and you’ll likely find a picture of Harry Hole (Santelman). We meet hard-drinking Hall—whom I’ll call Harry from now on because he sounds like he’s got less than two laughs—as he drinks and investigates a bank robbery that ends in a bloody murder. This makes it bad timing for Harry to be forced into a car chase of a potential suspect, a chase that ends in an accident and the death of Harry’s partner.

Five years later, Harry is still obsessed with the unsolved murder at the bank, but otherwise he’s doing well. He has an admirably tolerant girlfriend (Raquel Pia Tjelta), whose son (Oleg, played by Maxime Bon Bouchaud) is finally starting to warm to him. He gets along productively with his partner (Ellen, played by Ingrid Bolsó Berdahl) and although he’s not a fan of authority, his redemption rate is high enough to give him a lot of freedom (as if killing your partner, but accidentally, while keeping your job doesn’t actually represent a lot of freedom). He’s even stopped drinking, though he carries a flask to remind himself of the temptation.

With Harry, the personal downward spiral is only one case away, and as the series unfolds, there are several seeping disasters that may be ready to coalesce into self-destruction. It appears that someone is conspiring to arm Oslo’s two rival gangs, a looming civil war that the city’s police – most of which are banned from carrying weapons – will be unable to stop. Meanwhile, a series of murders and missing persons cases begin to look like the work of a single Bible-loving criminal, someone skilled at crunching numbers and leaving clues that seem to point to a serial killer.

Could one, or perhaps both, of these circumstances be linked to Harry’s Swedish-born colleague Tom Waller (Kinnaman), who is certainly corrupt and perhaps (definitely) a sociopath? It’s not a spoiler to say the answer is “yes.”

Nesbø wrote the entire series and, along with directors Øystein Carlsen and Anna Zachrisson, establishes an extraordinary sense of eerie, nihilistic doom as Harry’s precarious equilibrium is thrown into immediate danger. Drinking and rampant rule-breaking soon ensue.

at least Detective hole He offers a few moments of hilarity, or at least marginal normalcy, in his pilot, something that can’t be said of Tomas Alfredson’s disastrous adaptation of Snowmana film that I think works really well for 45 minutes of setup, but then goes horribly off the rails for the rest.

But don’t expect too much brightness from it Detective hole – Not from Nesbo’s novel, which focuses on violence, especially sexual violence, with an obsession that borders on the painful. There’s little brightness in Ronald Plant’s cinematography too, focusing as it does on Oslo’s darkest corners, presenting a city populated primarily by addicts, sex workers and the homeless – except when he focuses on scenic views and night scenes where filtered lights give the gloom a yellow or green aura. It’s a very vague offer, but unlike yours Ozarks or Black rabbitIt’s a display that makes darkness visually clear.

If that’s not enough, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis contribute one of their patented melodic riffs, a welcome counterpoint to a largely punk-focused soundtrack, because Harry Hole likes him some Ramones.

Santelman, who in some light resembles a lanky Jason Statham, gives a performance that matches the sombre aesthetic. Harry is a whiner and Oslo is his trash, which is not how the city is traditionally depicted, and Santelman makes the descent into greater and greater gloom seem natural. He has enough hopeful scenes with Tjelta and Bochud to make Harry feel at least peripherally human, though the character can certainly become exhausting to watch at times.

Harry is not a nice person to be around, but in Kinnaman the series has a well-acted antagonist. There’s never a point where you’re supposed to think Tom is anything other than a smiling devil, the only question is how bad he is. Tom bears a resemblance to Kinnaman, from AMC’s adaptation of the Danish drama Murderwere actually as evil as everyone suspected him to be, and the actor had an explosion of levity and sarcasm. It’s a very charismatic performance, even though the character is a bit of a mess – a combination of trauma and sexual pathology meant to make him more terrifying, but rarely more human.

The rest of the ensemble is very good, especially Ellen Helinder as Beate, one of those multi-professional procedural characters who comes in handy when you need something technical or a superpower to investigate. He has also previously played the dual role of Peter Stormare, as a gruff gang leader named Odin, and Anders Danielsen Lee, as a man who is immediately morally skeptical because he recommends Harry read more Heidegger.

If the storytelling were tighter and more successfully focused on its more socially provocative elements, Detective hole It would have settled into the upper echelon of the stuffed genre rather than occupying a place in the accepted middle. There’s a lot of red flags, a lot of focus on naked bodies and mortal wounds, and a lot of quotes Revelationthere are a lot of misdirections that you have seen before in similar movies and TV shows.

By the time the season comes to a close, and Harry finally sees the big picture, he looks at the suspect and wonders sadly, “Why does it have to be so complicated?”

Very complicated. dark Very nice. It’s not a fun nine hours of television, but that’s what happens when you go down to “Harry Hole.”