NipPierce Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

Micitype Pretty Good

HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

ianlouisiana As a cop from the 20th century I was used to gung - ho,let's kick the bloody door down,give him a smack fit this one up we know he's at it - type policing. That is not the way Ch Insp Wallander works. Want to open a locked door?Get the building superintendent. That seems eminently more sensible to me. Wallander is a "New Man". He thinks.I know Morse thought but.against the run of the tide I thought him the least likely TV cop ever. Wallander rarely acts on impulse.I don't think Morse ever had any impulse beyond listening to Mozart(not ranking high on most real cops' playlists - for better or worse) or driving his Jaguar.No cop I ever knew drove his own car if it was worth more than two bob in case some villain did it up. Wallander is practically a basket case(not uncommon) with an ex - family (very common) but has loyal colleagues who care about him. He has a gun(thank God we didn't have them in my day or London would have been knee - deep in dead crooks) but is loath to use it. But most of all he represents decency and humanity as madness overtakes Sweden and he is fighting against the machine whether from without or within his own ranks. Mr K Branagh has included all these characteristics in his portrayal of this troubled cop and has come up with a master - class of acting with no gestures, no accents or mannerisms that even the best of actors can fall back on if pushed. We like to think of Sweden as a "modern" liberal and enlightened country but Henning Mankell tells us it just ain't so. Wallander - clinging to the ropes - has no chance of reversing this tide but we know he will do his damnedest. Like Quixote without a Sancho Panza, Wallander will go on if it kills him.

p-seed-889-188469 The biggest mystery with this series is not the stories but why on earth the BBC chose to copy something that has already been very well, in its country of origin, and so recently. Are things really that desperate in BBC television land? Bizarrely we have a program that is supposed to be set in Sweden but in which everyone speaks the Queen's English and the backdrops are so generic it could be set be in any one of about 100 countries. It makes about as much sense as Swedish television making a carbon copy of Midsommer Murders, spoken in Swedish. It really is head scratching stuff. Surely then, given the bizarreness of the premise, the only possible remaining justification for hijacking the Wallander character and anglicising him must be that they are going to do something different and groundbreaking with him. If you thought this you would be supremely disappointed for based on the first episode Wallander is a by the numbers, cliché ridden, yawn fest. Dishevelled middle aged detective with stubble? Check. Trouble with his daughter and parents? Check. Wife left him? Check. Relationship at work? Check. Groups of people huddled round desks stating the bleeding obvious? Check. Visually arresting but ultimately ridiculous and gratuitous introduction? Check. A series of murders involving some arcane ritualistic aspect? Check. Rookie who throws up on seeing his first victim? Check. I have never read the Wallander books or seen the Swedish TV series, but given that Kenneth Brannagh went to so much trouble to get the author of the novels to agree to doing this series you might have thought the Wallander character was something truly exceptional and supremely rewarding for an actor of his calibre. Based on the first episode I can report that in fact Wallander as portrayed in this series is simply the usual cut-out character, of no interest, and what's even worse, supremely incompetent at his job. In the first episode he is singlehandedly responsible for the totally avoidable deaths of two young people, presumably so we can see how "human" and affected he is, which is, I gather, is Wallander's "claim to fame". Death number 1 - ridiculously a young girl is in the middle of a field of tall yellow flowers. How she came to be there, and why, we never find out. Not only that, she turns out to have possibly the largest can of petrol in the world. Because if you want to kill yourself you would intuitively go miles into the country to a large field of yellow flowers and choose the most ridiculous way of killing yourself, right? Even without the petrol can we can all see that this girl is on the edge, but that does not stop our hero from barging in like a complete klutz, resulting in the girl killing herself. At the end of the episode, having contrived to lure the killer into a trap, not only do 4 police fail to intercept the culprit before he gets to his prey, but despite having minutes to do so, are unable to disarm him and Wallander ends up shoot him dead. You can see now why his name is Wallander for evidently he is a complete Wally. Not only does he needlessly kill a 15 year old boy, but a boy who is not a villain, but doing what he thought was right. At no time does Wallander show any signs of good leadership, good judgment, or good detective work. We are left wondering how on earth he came to be in the position of leading a police team, and how they could possibly have any respect for him - he has no presence, no charisma, he is just an emotional, angry little man. He gets angry with witnesses and does and says stupid things that would see him fired in a heartbeat in real life. Of course in his team we have all the usual suspects. A woman with no apparent function but who is the latest recipient of the "Broadchurch award for worst hairdo", taking over from Ellie Miller. Apparently she has lost her hairbrush and is now doing her hair with a blender. Meanwhile another woman of unknown function exchanges many furtive glances with our hero Wallander. Rounding the team out we have a couple of fellows whose function appears to be to barge in when things get slow and say "Boss I think you'd better see this". Disappointing and bizzare beyond measure.

checabear-252-222274 Just coming to the end of binge watching of this series. Really enjoy the stories and the characters. Kind of getting cliché of detective living 24hrs with their work. Like they will start using toothpicks on their eyes to keep awake. I am waiting for the 7 eleven detective series. If this is how detectives work than we would all have dysfunctional police forces. May as well go into Psychiatry. I like the series because it solves the crime in 130 minute. Broadchurch would be solved in the same time had Wallander been assigned to the case. One refreshing thing is, it hasn't been turned into a soap opera. Long running series eventually all fall into this trap. The walking dead was heading into this direction but thankfully characters started to fall. Wonder what the origin series was like.

Brigid O Sullivan (wisewebwoman) or in any real life situation for that matter. I'm a great fan of Branagh, he could read the phone-book with feeling. BUT as the constantly depressed and melancholic detective Karl Wallandar, he begins to grate. Yes, of course it's the direction and the tampering of the writers with the original Swedish version and the excellent series of books but truly, this version has become almost unintelligible in dialogue and so very unintelligent in script.This Wallander should be committed or incarcerated he is so unbelievably incompetent. In every case. And in every situation. I'm on series 3 and I don't think I've ever been so irritated by a cellphone in real life. The lengthy swooping ring on his, which plays maybe 20 times or more in each episode, is enough to make you switch off. Nobody in this police department has ever heard of setting it to vibrate in tense and deadly situations? Speaking of tense situations this buffoon wanders into every scene without backup or telling his boss where he's going or when he does take a co-worker puts them in immediate mortal danger.He does a lot of non-vocal staring when conversation is thrown at him. And throwing, he does physical throwing too, once a whole television! Wow! You never see him trim his stubble, it always remains the same length (isn't that hard to do?) And he's incapable of any relationship, father, partner, daughter due to that interminable boring stare.And driving. A Volvo, which gets shot out a few times but then miraculously appears whole again on the bleak grey roads of Sweden.He always escapes direct gunfire even in open spaces.And I haven't mentioned the lack of plot or the bafflement of plot, huge holes left untended. Meaningless clues scattered here, there and everywhere. And graphic, unnecessary scenes of mangled bodies. And no explanation, ever of what you've just invested an hour and a half in.I can't see it getting better so I'm bailing out after far too many wasted hours of my time.5 out of 10