The Purity of Vengeance

Journal 64 is the best or second best in the series. Made more powerful by a sensitive topic that is currently very pressing in Europe, which I don’t want to give away (it appears in the film as a secondary storyline that completely takes over the film’s drive and adds some gravity). (08/10/2018)

It took three films for Department Q to find its film identity. After the contradictory and screenplay clumsiness of the previous films, this is finally a decent combination of a whodunnit detective story and a social thriller, which is driven forward by its two central characters. It has a strong, great pace and only a few moments of partial clumsiness. In addition, the involvement of the current social storyline is very, very skillful. It’s a Scandinavian Noir champion. (26/01/2019)

The Scandinavians are back with their fourth adaptation of a bestselling novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen, starring the excellent duo of Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Fares Fares. Fortunately, you don’t need to be familiar with the previous installments to enjoy this one. Twelve years later, three mummified bodies are found behind a wall in an apartment, sitting at a table with their entrails on the table, but the case gets much bigger and more complex. Very suspenseful, well acted, strong filmmaking, the twists and turns at the end are impressive and the atmosphere is properly bleak. This is what the Scandinavians are really good at, and when good material is available it goes without saying. 80% (27/02/2019)

I consider the previous parts of the series to be interchangeable, slightly above-average adaptations of much more complex books, whose criminal plot usually suffered from the fact that the viewer was always one step ahead of the investigator duo in the main roles, with the exception of the standard search for the offenders of an old case, never tried to achieve anything deeper. In short, these were decent genre entries. This changes with the fourth episode, by far the best in the series. It begins with the obligatory finding of three old corpses and the search for their killer, but then grows enormously to unsuspected proportions in which conspiracies covered by real events play a role, parallels to the MeToo campaign, the theme of equality in a multicultural world and criticism of the institutionalized treatment of "fallen women". The characters finally undergo some development, fundamental enough that the eternally gloomy Carl is not constantly the same antisocial grouch. The story has unsuspected depth and well-thought-out situations with a good point, and the exciting storytelling has a constantly escalating gradient. The only thing that can be criticized is that sometimes it is somewhat routine, but otherwise it has absolutely masterful directing. (08/10/2018)

As much as the cards are dealt more than decently at the beginning (a cool crime, an intervention into difficult Danish history, translated relatively painlessly into contemporary themes) after the halfway point it starts to fall apart unpleasantly, the stupid behavior of the characters becomes annoyingly irritating, and the whole thing gets buried again by that touch of ordinary TV detective that weighed down the previous episodes. The entire Home for Wayward Girls has, by all accounts, two employees, we basically never get any evidence of any significant ability in the central detectives, as they stumble upon most of the progress in the case by accident or get it by phone calls, and when we get to the more dynamic passages, the film starts to feel uncomfortably reminiscent of Cobra 11. It's no wonder the whole series has been such a success over here, it's exactly as unambitious and frozen as the Czech TV viewer likes it. Perhaps only the unchanging character of Carl, who really doesn't move anywhere with his dickishness until the last seconds of the whole series, allows for some catharsis at the end. Yes, I was rooting for the woman in the restaurant to see through him and call the police on him right after he finishes eating her almonds. (23/04/2019)

Journal 64 was even more entertaining than the previous installment of the Adler-Olsen series. The creators managed to build a perfectly unsettling atmosphere and very decent suspense, this time adding proper action as well. Morck was, unlike the upbeat Assad, clearly bullied by life and the story made sense, so I was happy and had almost nothing to complain about. (08/03/2019)