Originally titled Nobel’s Last Will, LAST WILL (M) is the latest cinematic realisation in a spate of Scandinavian crime thrillers based on Nordic novels.

Like the most celebrated of these ice cold conspiracy and corruption capers, The Millennium Trilogy, LAST WILL has a crusading journalist as its protagonist, Annika Bengtzon played by Malin Crepin.

She is covering the annual Nobel bequest banquet when one of the Nobel committee, Caroline von Behring, is gunned down by cold, calculating hired killer, Kitten.

Caroline’s dancing partner, Israeli stem cell specialist, Aaron Wiesal is assumed to be the real target of the hit, but the intrepid reporter’s investigations indicate that the obvious often obfuscates and the plot thickens when other bodies start mounting up.
Based on a Liza Marklund novel that is part of a series featuring Annika Bengtzon, the film’s most fulsome characters are female, with the men mostly meek as mouse spouses, megalomaniacs, misogynists, and male members.

The heroine is a ballsy, no bull, anti-bullying bureaucracy buster and the assassin with code name Kitty is pure purrfection as a feline femme fatale, played with a lithe athleticism by Antje Traue. As assassins go, move over Scaramanga, – with her amber eyes and auric dress Kitty is certainly the Woman with the Golden Glam.

Director Peter Flinth helms this hybrid feature film/telemovie with panache although hampered slightly by a tad too trite episodic structure by screenwriter Pernilla Oljelund.

If there was a Nobel Prize for Thrillers, LAST WILL would probably not be nominated, however it is a worthy addition to the tradition of Scandy pipe and slippers crime capers, less Nesbo, more Wallander

© Richard Cotter

13 September, 2012

Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- LAST WILL, Cinema Paris, Ticket giveaway, Martin Crepin, Lize Marlund, Antje Traue, Peter Flinth, Pernilla Oljelund, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter.