Beck 08 - Trails in Darkness
Beck 08 - Trails in Darkness
| 19 September 1998 (USA)
Beck 08 - Trails in Darkness Trailers

A serial killer that decapitates people is on the loose in the Stockholm subway. Martin Beck and his colleagues try to catch the killer, while the panic in the city increases.

Reviews
Mattias Petersson

There are moments when lousy script-writing transcends the depths of horror and becomes truly awful. This is one of those moments.I don't even know where to begin. The fact that there were more of these pathetic "Beck"-movies produced after this disaster proves more than anything the dreadful state of Swedish film-making. The plot is psychos are killing people in the subways, leaving the police dumbfounded. Spearheading the investigation is as usual the worn-out cop Martin Beck (Peter Haber) and the departments muscle Gunvald Larsson (Mikael Persbrandt). Haber is as always in these movies, very very tired. I can still remember movies when i thought that Haber was actually a good actor, but that seems like ages ago now. Nowadays he's just... tired. Persbrandt is the most entertaining part of the Beck-franchise. The cop that constantly threatens violence on anyone he perceives to be a criminal. Honestly these characters aren't as bad as they sound, with a proper script they could work.Because the problem here as in all the new Beck-movies is the script. It always stinks. In the older Beck-movies where there were books to back up the story there was at least some semblance of coherence. The scripts to the new movies seem like five-minute jobs. In the end no detective-movie/crime drama can survive without a proper script, so it's no surprise that this is an almost complete failure. Sad.

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Erik Otterberg

The crime novels of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are classics, and rightly so. To this day they remain one of the most unique and special works of their genre. Most of them have been transfered to the the silver screen and one of those films, Bo Widerbergs "The Man on the Roof" is perhaps one of the top ten best Swedish movies ever.This new series, starring Peter Haber and Michael Persbrandt are how ever not based on the novels. Even the claim that the characters should be based on the main protagonists of Sjöwall/Wahlöös novels is quite ridiculous. Screenwriter Rolf Börjlind in fact uses only two characters, Martin Beck and Gunwald Larsson, and goes on to invent a whole new cast of supporting characters. (Unless of course you count Becks daughter, who really only appears very briefly in the books.) And neither Beck nor Larsson in this version display any of the subtlety of the original characters. It is as if they have been reduced to their on clichés.Out of all these movies, this one is without a doubt the silliest. While Sjöwall/Wahlöö analyzed society and came up with some pretty harsh conclusions about the role the police plays in the escalation of violence, these movies settle for taking middle-class fears and anxieties and exploiting them. Beck gets to chase psychos and loonies and foreign mafia syndicates, the one worse the other. Here it is kids who play video games that are the big threat.The plot is complete science-fiction though presented as realism. Instead of of challenging common prejudices like the novels did, these films embrace them. It is very cynical.

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flight_643

This film is really great, actually it is the best Beck film. It has the right feeling, and probably it is quite realistic too. The crazy guys with the Night Googles are just too creepy.I recommend this film! If you want to see a really good thriller, see this!

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Neo-181

This one is a must see!The difference between this film and the other "new" Beck films is huge. I don´t know why but it could be that the director of the other films, Harald Hamrell has been replaced by Danish director Morten Anfred. This film has got a totally different go than the others rather lame films (and a great story) Four people are being brutally murdered in the Stockholm subway and Martin Beck and his group gets the case. They start up a hunt for the murder(ers) in the tunnels. The story is much more complicated than that, but i wont reveal too much.Anyway. This is a great, swedish movie. A gold star too the performance of Mikael Persbrandt as Gunvald Larsson. If you ever get the chance too see it, take it! /Erik Nordlund

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