A thread for The Killing, aka much-lauded Danish drama "Forbrydelsen" (with spoilers)

Should have embeddinated that

http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DKaDk0YdCWjI

Guuuuuh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaDk0YdCWjI

I got really, really addicted to this. There are some excellent, excellent performances by the cast. Some of the subtle looks and facial expressions and inscrutable interiority you get out of the characters is fucking excellent. In fact pretty much everyone was excellent. Eventually got kind of fatigued by Troels Hartmann but mainly because, unlike The Wire, the political superstructure really had fuck all to do with it. Someone stole a car in episode one and that's still all it was in the end. The Jan Meyer buddycop was my favourite though. He was just unbelievable the way he is simultaneously this gun-toting hardass and a guy who says "I promised my wife I'd keep a job for more than three weeks."

I just finished it this morning and I realize when I think back to the initial suspects (that semi-retarded guy who tied up an old woman for absolutely no reason) how distended the plotting of the show had really been. It would probably work better if you watched only one episode a week... A few days later you've sort of forgotten and you're ready for someone else to be the main suspect. Watching it on DVD or downloaded kind of compresses everything too much (whereas the Wire seemed to work even better the more of it you watched in a sitting).

In a weird clumsy way I like how practically everyone was the main suspect at some point. I was even considering Pernille Birk Larsen at one point. Or some weird combination of Pernille Birk Larsen and Troels Hartmann (who misleadingly seemed to recognize each other in a hallway early on in the series... with weird music playing over the top). Kept wanting them to introduce satanists or something but oh well.

The Jens Holck thing was, I think, where the series started to tip over into something that didn't really have all its marbles... like almost in a Tommy Wiseau way, but obviously still outwardly very serious and well-done.

(not reading this thread - yet) I'm on ep. 15 & wondering what five more episodes are going to consist of. I mean, Jens H could not have been a red herring, right?.. I have to say that I did pick him for the deed pretty early on (always the quiet ones), but now I am generally dumbfounded & loving it completely.

I hope the US version takes a different path so that watching it won't simply be a retread.

Who is the American actor who looks just like the actor that played Brix? I can't place him.

Jan Meyer was the best! That actor has the Dutch/Danish face going on that always reminds me of these:
http://www.weirdotoys.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/puppets01.jpg

sweepy ambient music for emo scenes sounds quite a bit like the slowed-down Bieber Ros thing that made the blog rounds last year.

not reading this thread but i just watched the first two episodes back to back and.... wow.

it's like a very, very, very good wallander except this time wallander is the irritating sidekick instead of the main character.

i loved how she pops a piece of gum into her mouth at home, like 10 minutes after she's woken up (how simple it seems to establish a character, when it's done like this).. and then when she's arrived at the "crime scene" (actually an elaborate gag played on her by her colleagues) she's still chewing that gum.

Who is the American actor who looks just like the actor that played Brix?

dunno about this, but I thought Brix resembled a roided-up Bez.

i can't find downloads of season 1 (especially the early episodes) on the usual sites. surely some mistake?

^ check yr webmail

thanks, i was searching in a particularly stupid way and missing all that. all set now.

so are we talking about US Killing on this thread? cause it's awesome.

yeah it's really good
something is up with the aunt imo - the one who's always at the larsen's house
also the other detective, he's a former gang member isn't he? is he moonlighting as a private investigator on the side?

A thread for AMC's The Killing, a remake of much-lauded Danish drama "Forbrydelsen"

xp

thanks!
by the way how can one see the original here in the US? i can't find it anywhere

It is hard to see the AMC version objectively, having binged on Forbrydelsen over the past two weeks. So far, it seems to be following the same tack, which I'm hoping will change (for the sake of variety) - I don't see how it can't, being that the AMC version will be seven eps shorter than the OG.

I think the acting and characterization in The Killing is mostly excellent, but the atmospheric quality of Forbrydelsen was just so off-the-hook AWESOME, that I don't see how TK can transcend its redheaded-stepchild status w/o some major plot variations.

unless it is currently available through Netflix in the US, you will have to resort to piracy.

xp

god this was great! watched all 20 episodes in record time. lot of 24 in it, but they handle the twists very, very well, i thought.

for some reason he's been my prime suspect since early on: not sure how they insinuated it but they did

― BIG GERTRUDE aka the steindriver (history mayne), Wednesday, March 23, 2011 7:53 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

gf and i called vagn early too--the thing that made me suspect him was the scene where theis is showing him the house and mentions that nanna is going to live on the top floor, and vagn has this kind of awkward shifty thing going on. but there are so many good twists that id basically eliminated him until the 3rd-to-last episode or something.

the whole thing kind kind of goes off the rails ca. 16th ep but youre so deep at that point it doesnt matter. meyers death really shook me.

i kind of wish they had taken the shady echelons-of-power stuff about town hall/rie's dad/the original police commander further; those threads got abandoned somewhere along the way with only vague mentions.

weird to me how similar a lot of the actors looked to established h'wood actors? or maybe i was just looking for it after a while

lund - girl from freaks and geeks
rie - gillian anderson
pernille - fraces mcdormand (btw i HATED this actress' weird tic of opening her eyes real wide and flicking them around)
theis had a kind of brian dennehy thing going on.

anyway this is one of the best series ive seen a while! are the 2nd and 3rd seasons as good? (are there english subtitles for them yet?)

oh and the shady police commander (blix? brix?) - tom noonan

also lol at lund's son disappearing about halfway through the series, fuck that kid, i hate it when detectives have families

the acting was pretty good through the whole thing but i thought the guy who played jan meyer and the guy who played theis really killed it, above and beyond the rest

lund - girl from freaks and geeks

kinda, but i think that was a lot to do with the donkey jacket thing

just finished this. incredibly slow start. nearly gave up about 4 or 5 episodes in, but ended up watching the last 10 in one of those lost weekends (via box sets)

still don't get what rie was supposed to have done wrong? she seems to admit to cleaning up the outside of the flat, but so does morten?

agree about the political stuff. i was expecting a big conspiracy thing. maybe that was intentional misdirection. felt like a missed opportunity though (see also the FBI conspiracy stuff in the miami vice movie). the city hall scenes were the ones i looked forward to.

RIP meyer.

Sofie Gråbøl is my nu-god

If I could be her, I would

(see also the FBI conspiracy stuff in the miami vice movie).

this is my read:

john hawkes is a former informant of crockett and tubbs, whom they passed over to the feds. one night while they’re trying to take down herc from the wire, they get a call from a tearful hawkes saying "badness is happening right now."

what's happened is, he’s set up a meet-n-greet between the aryan brotherhood and some fbi undercovers; but the aryans have the feds rumbled, and they don't have any backup. crockett and tubbs warn the local bureau chief but it’s too late and the feds get killed, and so does hawkes’s fam. he then steps under a lorry.

so the unchill aryan bros have cut into the feds and the feds need to plug the leak. crockett and tubbs are hired to go undercover as boatmen and get intel on the aryans' suppliers,* which turns out to be a large operation with hubs in the triple frontier and haiti.

when c & t are bringing in a big shipment, they give out different information to different branches of the fbi, and that way they’ll sus out who’s feeding the aryans with information.

it call goes sideways because the bad guys take naomi harris hostage.

*ok this bit is maybe murky

felt like a missed opportunity though

yeah, totally, especially cause danish tom noonan bro was nice n creepy

FBI conspiracy stuff in Miami Vice "resolved" (abandoned) after C & T let the guys know how to find the leak. I have a feeling there was meant to be more but they had to quickly change the ending because Foxx refused to go back to South America to film the actual climax of the film. Or maybe Mann just stopped caring about that particular plot at some point. Either way the movie is all the better for it, imo, whereas the conspiracy stuff in The Killing is just boring red herrings.

it wasn't boring imo, i liked the characters enough

the only stuff i found boring-ish was the grieving parents

a little goes a long way

http://allfiberarts.com/2011/sarah-lund-white-sweater-motif.htm

yeah i think i understood the fbi conspiracy stuff in miami vice nrq, it's just it seemed to be an open thread at the end of the film.

i guess the killing was different: not an open thread so much as a red herring. would have liked it not to be a red herring because it was cool though (max otm about tom døønån, he was great!)

any thoughts on this? i am probably being dim:

still don't get what rie was supposed to have done wrong? she seems to admit to cleaning up the outside of the flat, but so does morten?

is it something to do with suppressing the photo... hang on nah that was morten?

idk

she maybe screwed that guy?

> http://allfiberarts.com/2011/sarah-lund-white-sweater-motif.htm

RONG. isn't symmetrical and the left bit is too close to the middle.

if i may draw your attention here:

Rolling iPlayer and 4OD and iTVPlayer 2011

This is being repeated on BBC4 just now. Second episode 10pm tonight, first is on iPlayer, and it's tied with Only Connect as the biggest reason to continue the existence of BBC4.

Loving this. *must not look up to find out who was the murderer*

oh ffs, keep meaning to catch this, but episode one is now no longer on there. will have a rootle around on the 'net i guess.

finished this tonight. have to say it was good however after a while it's gets a bit cyclical and you never believe whoever ABSOLUTELY MUST BE GUILTY is guilty. it starts to get a bit irritating near the end.

Last episode is one of the most colossal letdowns I've had with a TV series, given it shows so much of the stuff from earlier in the series to have been pointless contrivance that's utterly ludicrous. I mean, the Jens Holck stuff - why would he have run someone over, then tried to kill Lund WHEN HE WASN'T EVEN GUILTY OF ANYTHING TO COVER UP?

Sorry if that's spoilery - had a look upthread and didn't think I was guilty of more than anyone else who'd finished the series. But that annoyed me so much.

Yeah exactly, and the whole "let's get Sarah Lund arrested" thing was such a cheap shot. It didn't feel natural and was just part of the crescendo. The first few eps work cos you can't tell where it's going but after that it's basically building certain cases against anyone which you know will fall through.

Yep: why were the police authorities so concerned that she would uncover the fact that ... a racist, pervert manual labourer was involved. Red herrrings are good in thrillers, but there has to be a purpose to them; they have to be resolved. Otherwise its a cheap trick: any crap writer can throw in unresolved conspiracies; the trick, if they are not the actual denouement, is to resolve them in a satisfactory manner. Once a writer sets them up, they have made an implicit promise to the viewer: "I'll be back for these later." The writers of The Killing set them all up, then just left them there, which absolutely anyone can do; it turned out to be based on a whole series of broken promises. Unforgivable.

i basically agree w. ^^.

the show hasn't rally 'stayed with me'. but i liked the characters, thought it was well put together, liked the mileu (bbc4-viewer potential city-breaker? yeah i guess), found it suspenseful, and so it's easily worth seeing once. and i'll watch the second season.

i can't really remember the solution, but the show hinted at a much bigger political conspiracy and failed to follow through, iirc.

Just finished this - I for one was glad the murder wasn't a political conspiracy, it would have felt ridiculous.

Last episode is one of the most colossal letdowns I've had with a TV series, given it shows so much of the stuff from earlier in the series to have been pointless contrivance that's utterly ludicrous. I mean, the Jens Holck stuff - why would he have run someone over, then tried to kill Lund WHEN HE WASN'T EVEN GUILTY OF ANYTHING TO COVER UP?

Eh? He was guilty of having an affair with a schoolgirl using another party's flat and bribing a civil servant to keep quiet about it. That's not murder-level obviously but in normal political terms it's a career-ender and possibly illegal as well.

It only doesn't make sense if you assume it's calculated. Given all the above, when said schoolgirl was then found murdered having been attacked in a flat he'd been in, having made the bribes and tried to cover them up... he just became certain he was going down for it and panicked. It seemed like an open-and-shut case for everyone except Lund.

Also, I'd had Vagn pegged as the killer from very early on so was happy that played out. I don't understand why it's unforgiveable to so heavily hint at a conspiracy and for it then to turn out to be something else. What with him and Weber both being the guilty parties = never trust a loyal confidante with no initial discernable plot function.

finished this tonight. have to say it was good however after a while it's gets a bit cyclical and you never believe whoever ABSOLUTELY MUST BE GUILTY is guilty

By the third or fourth time this happened I just started to enjoy it, thrillers kind of have to do things like that to string the suspense out. Still, it did annoy me the number of times Troels Hartman had a "hey, we're in the clear!" kind of moment and then made some big public statement that then immediately blew up in his face. How many times did that happen?

Also the actors playing Nanna's parents were totally the best thing about this. And Meyer, I loved that guy.

Poor Meyer!

never trust a loyal confidante with no initial discernable plot function.

looool

Also I don't think Rie actually did anything wrong? Except maybe fucking that guy but equally maybe not. Hartman was just extremely paranoid at that point and a massive dick to her. But then he couldn't actually go back on that without hanging Weber out to dry, which would in turn break his career.

If I was a fictional citizen of Copenhagen I'd have been out on the streets in protest at the completely farcical state of my political system and police force but no one really seemed that arsed? And then Hartman just became mayor by default? Bit weird.

Does anyone know when the Killing 2 gets to be shown on the BBC? I thought it was scheduled for Autumn?

1st November according to someone on the Facebook page. DVD available on Amazon on 12th December.

1st november is a tuesday though. and these things are traditionally on the saturday.

they are currently showing the wallander films. last saturday was 'man who smiled' and next saturday is 'one step behind'. there are 2 more after that (firewall, pyramid) but the first is a two-parter. so i'd say the 5th or the 12th.