JOHAN FALK SERIES PART 12- ALLA RÅNS MODER (MOTHER OF ALL ROBBERIES)

Previously on Johan Falk:

Shit, I forgot to mention an important plot point in previous post; Seth Rydell being stuck in the middle of a neonazi weapon exchange. At the end Sophie confronts Seth with evidence that can really fuck him over...un less....he can become an important ...in filtrator.

Also, Frank Wagner and family has broken with his gang and their old life. Now on their way to France. Bye bye!

From the end of 107 patriots we have a beginning of a relationship between two people from different sides of the law, That starts of opposites but later warm up. I love the idea of two opposite sides come together at last. It is like out of a John Woo movie or something. Because there is belief that mankind can overcome differences.

Jesus I sound like a hippie. But here are some  shots from 107 patriots that sets them up as both friends and foes:

Oh wait, I have this first, I forgot;

"The dead one is a nazi right?"

"The technicians want to examine him"

Johan wants to get ahead of the technicians to get the wire of  the poor dead nazi they fooled into working with the cops.  Otherwise ....jesus. You guys at GSI...

Now, finally I can get to my goddamn point  from the last movie:

Seth is in a jam

This is the moment Sophie tries to coerce Seth into working for GSI as an informant/infiltrator ( who gives a fuck what it is called by now?) SHe threatens to plant dna  from an old robbery unless he cooperates.

Plot:

A team of robbers is planning one helluva heist and GSI is triyng to get ahead, by using an informant. And now that Frank is gone, they have a new recruit; Seth Rydell. A somewhat reluctant sociopath of a recruit.  But Johan is not the handler. GSI´s sole female officer Sophie Nord is on the case.And they have a bit of a power struggle. Something that makes everything a bit more interesting.

Now:

I love heist films. There is something about pulling of a caper that is fun as a concept.

Thief and Heat by Michael Mann are two of my absolute favourites. Charlie Verrick with Walter Mathaeu is another one. The friends of Eddie Coyle is a great movie with Robert Mitchum and also a real strong novel by George V Higgins. And not the least,  the fucking Parker novels by Richard Stark (a.k.a Donald Westlake), which features the biggest anti hero of them all. The template for pragmatic psychotics. 

Which leads us to Seth Rydell. This is his movie. Jens Hultén ( Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation). And for me turned him into a fucking beast of an actor. His performance and the way he plays Seth is more and more likeable, but also a pragmatic asshole , just like Parker from those wonderful novels by Stark. He thinks in terms of "what would this benefit me", but unlike Parker he is caught within the real world of bills and collectors. He also have a heart, unlike Parker.

But it is not all about Rydell. This is where the series gets interesting. Sophie as the single female in the GSI team wants to take him on in a handler/informant sort of way..  As a woman she has performance issues. The film does not gloss over that women has a harder part to play in a man s world. We get to see her struggle with the machismo world. And it is surprisingly earneast and good. We see her struggle with the relationship.It is not an easy relationship inany form. Seth is a manipulative bastard as we will  later  see. He knows how to use her and she is still  sometimes too easily convinced.. It is two wonderful performances and an wonderul dance between them and a great development on part of the writers. And a welcome addition to the series at this pint, creating that dynamic relationship.

Fast forward to the movie we are actually dealing with here. I have a tendancy to be sidetracked, forget bullshit and later need to refresh you guys on what is going on. I am a terrible narrator.

First time they meet inthis movie you can sense Sophie is a bit nervous. She yabbles about Seths outstanding parket tickets like it matters and as a lame joke. It is really uncomfortable to me as a viewer as I know she has no prior experience to this and now all of a sudden she confronts a hardened criminal

Seth calls her bluff surrounding the dna plant and she is exposed and vulnerable. She tries to play it up and match him, but it is clearly a shallow masquerade, but a perfect performance from the actress. A good scene to set up the beginning of a relationship that would last the rest of the series.

There are some things that just does not come across from still footage and that is a mistake Sophie does when Seth approaches her. She backs away. She should have stood her ground if she had more experience, I feel.

The biggest flaw of the last series was the fact that Frank was going to quit but it dragged out too far of the series. Johan kept pushing him and it became a convenient plot device to give Johan information ( kind of like how Jack Bauer tortures prisoners as a convenient plot device).  Now they actually have a real dynamic relationship to play of. None of them is in a position they want to be in. And as the criminal underworld is a very macho male dominated world, the women has to iceskate uphills ( as a great philosopher called Blade once said)

I have to give Sophie credit for trying to keep ahead in a mans world. She later confronts him in his own home and this time she nails it home, there is a lot of uncomfortable sexual threat inuendo comig from Seth, but she manages to reign him in, kind of...

But then there is the actual heist , which is a good one, Unbeknownst to Seth it takes place way ahead of schedule than planned, which meant that he could not have tipped Sophie off even if he would have wanted to. it is a great way to make the audience emphatize with him and also sow some seeds of distrust within the GSI

Unfortunatly this is also  one of those in which Johan Falk kind of disappears out of the movie  It may also feel a bit  light weight compared to other great  heist films if you only watch big budget Hollywood films, like aforementiond Heat. But it is very good by Swedish standards. It has grenade launchers and bigass machine guns and all sorts of awesome shit.

I  like to mention the part of the plot we get to spend time with Seth and the robbers that takes place in the arcepelago. There is some suspense as one of the robbers,Eloma, a complete psycho who is suspicious of Seth.

My name is Eloma I do not trust you.

Not to mention the great part in which Eloma pulls a big fucking gun when a police helicopter appears.

Pretty awesome. Too bad,Seth kills Eloma later in a cabin. Why? What do I know? He is a criminal!

Next time on Johan Falk: Johan Falk goes Liam Neeson. It´s Taken in Gothenburg