Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Fares Fares, Sonja Richter, Christoffer Aro, Claus Maack Bahnsen, Marie Hammer Boda, Nynne Bojsen, Rasmus Botoft, Ernst Boye, Michael Brostrup, Kenneth Carmohn, Marie-Louise Coninck, Divya Das, Katrine Engberg, Eric Ericson, Tilde Maja Fredriksen, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Betina Grove Ankerdal, Anton Jarlros Gry, Anna Sofie Helligsøe Haahr, Tobias Stæhr Hansen, Anne Bærskog Hauger, Olivia Holden, Martin Boserup, Øyvind B. Fabricius Holm, Anton Honik, Dorte Højsted, Marijana Jankovic, Morten Kirkskov, Bebiane Ivalo Kreutzmann, Henrik Larsen, Per Scheel Krüger, Lane Lind, Claes Ljungmark, Magnus Millang.
Homicide Detective Carl Mørck is in trouble, he disobeys the rules, is arrogant, his wife dislikes him, his stepson treats him worse than a week old Danish pastry being picked apart by a scavenging herring gull and now he is to blame for a man’s death and his best friends hospitalisation. It seems this is all in a day’s work for a Police Officer in Denmark.
Without the huge influx of Nordic Noir crime dramas that have come out in the last decade, the U.K. might never have fallen back in love with the style of film making and story-telling that Noir uniquely provides. Television dramas such as Henning Mankell‘s Wallander, both the equally popular original Swedish dramatisation starring Jan Krister Henriksson and latterly the Kenneth Branagh versions, The Killing and The Bridge, then crime drama in the last ten years would arguably have been happy to plod along at the same pace with only programmes such as the Morse off shoot Lewis, Poirot, Midsomer Murders and the Inspector Gently series standing out in a bland world and would be the only way that the British public would get their fix of restorative justice.
The Keeper of Lost Causes though doesn’t quite reach the dizzy heights set by its illustrious forbearers. In the same way that film has not been kind to the prolific work of James Patterson, the big screen version of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s writing just doesn’t poke out from behind the comfy formulaic sofa and offer a scare or two or plot that you don’t see coming from the same type of distance that you could throw a Danish bacon sandwich at a moving truck from.
Whilst the police buddy films of the 80s and 90s were in many cases were a critical success, the partnership of brooding and unwanted, cynical Homicide detective Carl Mørck, played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas and sympathetically acted sidekick Assad, played with some semblance of originality by Fares Fares is not as believable as the modern cinema audience perhaps deserves. The supposed tension that exists between them is almost as existent as the rivalry between Denmark and Malta in football terms or the competition between Hans Christian Anderson and Enid Blyton.
Where the film did succeed was in Sonja Richter’s portrayal of kidnapped and abused politician Merete Lynggaard. The way this actor showed her absolute fear in being placed into confinement, the use of the psychological use of cameras upon her as she dug deep into her ability as a thespian, especially in a scene that brings to mind a particular disturbing scene in The Boys From Brazil, was outstanding.
Sometimes causes are lost for a reason, because they don’t really add anything new to the genre, The Keeper of Lost Causes only just manages to keep out of its own dusty and forgotten Department Q.
Ian D. Hall