Seeking to ride on the coat-tails of the Millennium trilogy - it's billed as being by the same producers, although only one of the dozen or so involved in the earlier films is credited - the newest crime thriller out of Sweden has a journalist protagonist very different from Mikael Blomkvist.
Annika Bengtzon is the heroine of eight books (this is the sixth) by best-selling novelist Liza Marklund.
The film version is a routine, though nimble and crisp, procedural. Bengtzon (the pretty, leggy Crepin recalls a young Nicole Kidman) attends a ball after the Nobel banquet at which the laureate - a scientist whose research into stem cells has made him enemies - is shot and wounded and his dance partner, a high-ranking member of the Nobel Committee, is shot dead.
Gagged from writing about the case because she's a witness, Bengtzon digs around the edges, following a hunch that the scientist was not the target.
It's fair to say the slightly far-fetched story works better in the telling than the tale, certainly on screen. The very trim running time fits with the makers' ambition for TV sales - five more books are slated for small-screen adaptations - but it delivers a pacy and enjoyable watch.
