Forbrydelsen III brings back detective Sarah Lund and her wan boss Brix, Lund's flighty mom and her angsty son. Everyone else is new on the scene, but the scene is a crime scene, a manor house, a wealthy CEO, his pretty wife (they are separated), and his two kids, one of whom is kidnapped at the end of the first hour. The background of Forbrydelsen III is the financial crises. The wealthy CEO is in shipping; dock workers have fallen on hard times, and then they are killed, or perhaps become killers. And kidnappers.
The second stain, sorry, the second story of Forbrydelsen III is that of the Danish Prime Minister, his reelection, his team of advisers and rivals, all smart and selfish and in the case of Trine Pallesen, hard to not look at with carnal lust. The machinations of parliament are boring to all those outside parliament, but it is handled well in the context, and one waits for the two story lines to merge with foreboding suspense and worry.
Forbrydelsen III has its share of lazy asides--people exit cars on highways because they are upset, blank stares that are supposed to reveal poignancy at times display boredom, flashlights in the mist/dark beam across cheap sets--but none of it distracts from the jet-fired propulsion of the stories, which yearn to break and ruin people.
How are the Forbrydelsen folks able to make 10 hours feel like 2? As we finished Forbrydelsen III my wife and I looked at one another with dumbfounded amazement. Was that the best way to spend two evenings of holiday vacation?
Probably not. But it was snowy outside, and we had 12 days of horsing around, of novels read, games played, snowballs hurled, meals cooked, trails hiked, songs sung, presents unwrapped. And for nine hours we demanded to know the fate of a kidnapped rich little blond girl. It seemed like time well spent. As for the girl...
The Scandinavians do seem to know how to do crime.
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