Last Will: DVD Review

Last Will: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Vendetta Films and Rialto

From the crime capital of the publishing world (apparently) comes this latest attempt at launching a Swedish crime franchise (and from a book series of six which pre-dates The Millennium Trilogy by some three years, published as it was in 2002).

The blonde Malin Crepin stars Annika Bengtzon, a crime reporter trying to get a break on tabloid paper Kvaillspressen who's also a mother of two and workaholic.

While Bengtzon is attending the annual Nobel banquet, she witnesses the attempted murder of the latest winner and the death of a high ranking Nobel committee member, Caroline von Behring. Gagged by the police for reporting on the crime as she's a direct witness to what happened, Bengtzon finds herself sidelined by the paper's editors and legal eagles.

However, the journalistic drive is strong in this one - and believing that the police and press are concentrating on the wrong shooting victim, she starts her own investigation...

And unsurprisingly that leads to corruption, intrigue, global mystery and threats.

Plus on top of that, Annika's having trouble with her youngest son, who's being bullied.

Nobel's Last Will is inevitably going to end up being compared with The Millennium Trilogy - and I'm sorry to say, when pitted against that, it will be found wanting.

Let's just say that crime solving has never looked so glamorous and flashy.

Nobel's Last Will opens with a slick and stylish section at the Nobel awards and then hurtles into traditional action film territory - it's a very odd mix and kind of sets out where this film is going.

It's more of a pulpy trash novel than a high faluting, wide reaching conspiracy piece to be honest; it's the Swedish crime sensibilities mixed in with a good looking Hollywood lead (Crepin even looks a little like Maria Bello) and some Hollywood style action rather than slow burning reveals.

Sure, there's plot holes aplenty (wouldn't someone actually notice that a key witness to a crime was investigating a death?) and with mixes of montages and flashbacks as Annika pieces together the clues (along with scenes of her underlining key names) it's not exactly challenging stuff. Granted it is watchable, well made pacy fluff, despite being a challenge to logic and pushing more for ludicrous than serious but whether I'd want to sit through another five adaptations of the Annika Bengtzon cases, I'm not so sure.

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