Day 170 - The Snowman



Day 170          The Snowman [2017]
                          
Screenplay                    Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan & Søren Sveistrup
Based on                       ‘The Snowman’ by Jo Nesbø
Director                         Tomas Alfredson
Cinematography            Dion Beebe
Music                            Marco Beltrami
Leads                            Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J. K. Simmons, Chloë Sevigny, Toby Jones, David Dencik
Production                     Working Title Films, Perfect World Pictures, Another Park Film

IMDb                                 5.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes                8%

As you can tell from the year of release – I have not reviewed the much-loved animated short film The Snowman. Far from it. This highly anticipated thriller from Working Title features Michael Fassbender as an alcoholic detective who attempts to solve the murders of a serial killer I will dub the killer snowman, because it sounds like a cartoon supervillain. It’s based on what I can only assume was a popular book, that I’m sure was popular because it’s a good book. This is not a good film. It’s like they thought to themselves hey, here’s a good idea, those Scandi dramas that do so well as television shows, let’s make a Scandi thriller film based on a best-selling novel, that’s sure to do well if we get a big name on board, right? Wrong. They should have made a series and sold it to Netflix or Sky or whoever and I’m telling you it would have done extremely well because we needed more character development as well as a more developed relationship between detective Harry Hole (Fassbender) and the killer snowman. If they’d thrown in a few more Scandi actors I would have enjoyed it more too as we get to see a load of Americans with Scandinavian names run around Norway. Norway’s scenery is the only thing that saved this film from being a complete and utter flop; you can’t go wrong with sweeping aerial shots of beautiful fjords and snowy mountains. It’s also worth praising whoever was in charge of putting the trailer and promos together for this film as they did a splendid job. It looked like it was going to be the next Zodiac or Se7en, but instead we had something Nicholas Cage would have been embarrassed to star in. Don’t bother.

Acting                             3 / 4
Writing                            1 / 4
Cinematography              3 / 4
Music                            1.5 / 4
HWF rating              1.5 / 4

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