If this is the best Commander Hamilton movie, I have no curiosity about the others.
A movie actor's greatest tools are his eyes, but when Peter Stormare wants to show great emotion, he closes his, so for five or six seconds we get to admire his eyelids while his feelings remain unknown behind them. Lousy acting technique.
Stormare also flinches sometimes when he fires a gun, turning his head away and clamping his eyes shut. Watch carefully. James Bond can rest easy with competition like this.
There are some interesting supporting performances from other actors, but not enough to hang a whole movie on. The cinematography is good-looking, doing a fine job of capturing the Nordic cold. Even the Sahara winds up looking cold. Perhaps Hamilton carries his own climate with him.
There are some individual good action sequences here. Unfortunately, the only sense of humor on screen belongs to the villain, which turns the hero into a big pill. James Bond's jokes may not be particularly good, but at least he doesn't look constipated all the time.
One positive point in the movie's favor is that the psychotic, contorted, vicious hatred of Israel in Guillou's books has been left out. What has been kept in is worship of a noble, heroic PLO, that he shows us functioning in Libya without the dictator Khaddafi's knowledge or supervision. This fantasy is hard to believe, since Khaddafi actually threw the PLO out of Libya for four years at a time. And at the end of the film, Hamilton gives the PLO a very disturbing gift. Where will they use that gift? Hamilton doesn't care.
We're a long, long way away from "For Whom the Bell Tolls" here.
Commander Hamilton will remain a local phenomenon. While Henning Mankell's books sell well around the world, Jan Guillou will never have the same success.
As for this film, bleeeeaaahhhhh.
A movie actor's greatest tools are his eyes, but when Peter Stormare wants to show great emotion, he closes his, so for five or six seconds we get to admire his eyelids while his feelings remain unknown behind them. Lousy acting technique.
Stormare also flinches sometimes when he fires a gun, turning his head away and clamping his eyes shut. Watch carefully. James Bond can rest easy with competition like this.
There are some interesting supporting performances from other actors, but not enough to hang a whole movie on. The cinematography is good-looking, doing a fine job of capturing the Nordic cold. Even the Sahara winds up looking cold. Perhaps Hamilton carries his own climate with him.
There are some individual good action sequences here. Unfortunately, the only sense of humor on screen belongs to the villain, which turns the hero into a big pill. James Bond's jokes may not be particularly good, but at least he doesn't look constipated all the time.
One positive point in the movie's favor is that the psychotic, contorted, vicious hatred of Israel in Guillou's books has been left out. What has been kept in is worship of a noble, heroic PLO, that he shows us functioning in Libya without the dictator Khaddafi's knowledge or supervision. This fantasy is hard to believe, since Khaddafi actually threw the PLO out of Libya for four years at a time. And at the end of the film, Hamilton gives the PLO a very disturbing gift. Where will they use that gift? Hamilton doesn't care.
We're a long, long way away from "For Whom the Bell Tolls" here.
Commander Hamilton will remain a local phenomenon. While Henning Mankell's books sell well around the world, Jan Guillou will never have the same success.
As for this film, bleeeeaaahhhhh.