Is The New Michael Fassbender Movie 'The Snowman' Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Say
"The Snowman," opening Friday October 20th, is an adaptation of Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø's seventh Harry Hole mystery novel — this is the first one to be adapted. The film, directed by Tomas Alfredson ("Let the Right One In") stars Michael Fassbender as Hole, a sulky detective investigating a series of murders where the killer always leaves behind a snowman at the crime scene. Is the movie an icy-cool mystery or does it end up looking as messy as the killer's childish taunting notes? Here's what the reviews say:
The Setup Is Pretty Standard Thriller Fare: Grumpy Cop Meets Partner, They Discover Grisly Clues…
Michael Fassbender's Harry is discovered blotto in an Oslo bus shelter, before stumbling back to a singleton's untended apartment. "We found mold behind the walls," shrugs the handyman spraying for dry rot. It's literary mildew that spreads elsewhere: Harry has a troubled relationship with his gallerist ex (Charlotte Gainsbourg), bathroom cupboards stocked deep with Diazepam, and a stack of unopened letters on his desk, most urgent among them being taunting missives from a serial killer leaving snowmen behind at the scene of his crimes.
Harry Hole (Fassbender) is officially between cases, but he inveigles his way onto this one by shadowing a new arrival at the city's police department, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson). Following a long trail of clues, the pair expand the investigation to include different cities and unsolved murders stretching back decades, soon realizing they have a serial killer on their hands. Their inquiries turn up murky connections between wealthy industrialist Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons), creepy doctor Idar Vetleson (David Dencik) and boozy detective Gert Rafto (Val Kilmer), who died years before in an apparent shotgun suicide.
Fassbender Can't Do Much With The Well-Worn Trope Of The Drunk, Disheveled Detective
Fassbender, affecting a low, near-accentless delivery that aptly matches the character's general inscrutability — a better approach than most in the film's Anglo-Nordic vocal smorgasbord — he's ideally cast as the intense, silently driven Hole, but the script gives him few currents to play beneath those still, iced-over waters.
[Variety]
Fassbender plays the kind of rule-breaking antihero who ticks every cliche on the flawed-genius screen cop checklist. Harry's crime-fighting instincts are brilliant but unorthodox, which means his stuffy bosses indulge him while female co-workers find him dangerously irresistible.
The idiosyncratic performers might have boosted it, yet where Fassbender brought new, uncanny qualities to bear during his recent "Alien" android antics, here he's stuck playing Composite Scandie Detective. Standing amid wide open spaces in woollens and a parka, his Harry stares frequently into the middle distance, sporadically smoking for added notes of disquiet.
Fassbender is reasonably plausible as a drinker, although most drinkers don't get to look as good or as gym-built as he does.
Rebecca Ferguson's Katrine is also let down by the script:
Katrine's more conflicted role in the case has been blandly simplified, her sexually fraught relationship with Hole reduced to some dour, erratic innuendo. It's all the more to Ferguson's credit, then, that she still emerges as "The Snowman's" liveliest, most limber presence.
[Variety]
You Might Cringe At How This Movie Handles The Nature Of Its Serial Killer
When you're playing it casual with sexual assault, female trafficking, dismemberment, and institutional corruption, it quickly becomes an exercise in bad judgement and bad taste.
[The Wrap]
It's hardly The Snowman's fault, and it's not the worst offender, but releasing a sadistic film in which 'loose' women are nastily and almost fetishistically beheaded in the week of the Harvey Weinstein debacle could hardly be more unfortunately timed for a film that already bears the marks of a troubled edit. The media will be unlikely to give it a pass in the current climate, and in a worst-case scenario, it could be used to highlight some pretty poor choices regarding gender depiction.
Ultimately, Alfredson And Company Made An Unsatisfying Film Without An 'Easy Fix' In Sight
Alfredson's direction proves yawnsomely methodical, ticking off surviving plot points as though filling in some I-Spy Book of Scandinavian Crime Cliches. He permits one novelty – an unexpected revival of Hot Butter's 1972 hit "Popcorn" – and has the advantage of screen-filling Nordic scenery, but his pacing makes the original Salander movies seem turbocharged.
Alfredson certainly seems to know the genre, or at least David Fincher's version of it, with elements of Seven, Zodiac and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo all identifiable. Sadly, this doesn't come close to the level of those films.
[Empire]
This should have been a success. The screenwriters include Oscar nominees Peter Straughan ("Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy") and Hossein Amini ("Drive"); Martin Scorsese exec produces; Dion Beebe takes on photography duties and award-winning Maria Djurkovic ("A Bigger Splash") goes to town with the Ikea-catalogue production design. Director Tomas Alfredson and his producers strain for a magic blend of his stylish ensemble noir "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and his macabre Swedish vampire fable "Let The Right One In." But you can hear the ice crack under the weight of all that expectation.
[The Wrap]
The late addition to the credits of Scorsese's revered editor Thelma Schoonmaker, supplementing the work of the estimable Claire Simpson, hints at a high level of creative uncertainty over just how to fillet and present Nesbø's dense, misdirection-filled yarn: an introduction to Hole for film franchise purposes, though adapted from the seventh novel in a series.
[Variety]
This Movie Will Be Remembered Best For Its Silly Snowmen And An Absurd Detective Computer
While Hole is clued into proceedings via naively scrawled notes sent directly to him by the killer — a device, like the squat little snowmen at every murder site, that plays more comically than creepily — the most resourceful legwork on the case is done by department newcomer Katrine (Rebecca Ferguson), a like-minded loose cannon who nonetheless shares few of her hunches with her scowling partner.
[Variety]
Sniggers at early trailers suggest these melting markers will be but one of this notionally sombre thriller's weak spots. As Harry and equally harassed partner Katrine (Rebecca Ferguson) rifle through years of missing-persons reports, we're introduced to a whole grotto's-worth of carrot-noses. There are forlorn-looking snowmen and irked-looking snowmen; flashbacks featuring Val Kilmer as a pie-eyed detective predecessor uncovering remote mountaintop snowmen[…]
When the story does get on track, you might yourself mildly bemused by its reliance on what appears to be a fictional piece of police detective kit, something called an EviSync, which holds police files and is also a GPS tracker and camera, but is bigger and more unwieldy than an iPad.
TL;DR
There's a lot happening on the surface of Alfredson's perplexing winter wonder-why, but considerably less going on inside.
[Variety]
Watch The Trailer