Well, I said just "boring" to avoid to be censored.As said, it can heal you from disliking Hollywood movies. They have at least some kind of casual entertainment. Which seems (after you saw that movie) not so easy.There was hard to find some piece of logic there. Maybe the biggest hit was when someone (who? and why?) killed the very bad guy, the policeman come and smiling offered himself to help that it seems like a suicide. It seemed that no-one was interested any further for this case.It was amazing seeing how Wallander are sweating in Capetown and begging for cool blower... while the others go with overcoat on the streets. Accidentally I knew how the weather is in Capetown and it is not especially hot even in the Summer. But this should be Africa and even South, so, it should be hot, isn't it?It was so boring that I was interested if something gonna happen. At the very end (maybe) I switched it off.

For fans of Henning Mankell's mystery novels featuring the Swedish police inspector, Kurt Wallander... ...for fans of the recent three-story television series, Wallander, with Kenneth Branagh as the Ystad inspector... ...try this Swedish film, The White Lioness (Den Vita Lejoninnan), made in 1996. The movie doesn't have the intricacies, character depth or lengthy and involved plot threads of the book, but come on now. The White Lioness is 500 pages of densely written prose. The movie runs just 104 minutes. In this time the movie manages to pack the basic story line, which is a tricky, serious story about a political assassination, planned in South Africa to take place in Scandinavia, with action, steady detection and style. Equally important, The White Lioness gives us an excellent Kurt Wallander played by the Swedish actor Rolf Lassgard. We have a Wallander who is in his forties, a big, rumpled man edging toward being seriously overweight, especially around the jowls, a lonely man who drinks too much, a cop who is authoritative and respected. Unlike the Branagh version, as good as it was, this Kurt Wallander, while lonely and sad at times, doesn't make such a big deal of it. With Wallander, we're in the middle of what seems to be a puzzle: An attractive real estate agent goes missing and is later found in the boot of a car with a bullet hole in her forehead. Unlike Wallander, we saw it happen and why. Right from the start we know white extremist Afrikaners in South Africa are planning to assassinate somewhere in Scandinavia a major South African leader. We even meet the icy ex-KGB man this group has hired to mastermind the operation. He's called Konovalenko. Jesper Christensen plays him with calm, convincing ruthlessness. We meet Victor Mabasha (Tshamano Sebe), the hit-man who will work with Konovalenko and who finds himself out of his depth. We see the two of them establish themselves in a small, empty house in the snowy countryside outside Ystad. We meet a Cape Town police detective named John September (Basil Appolis) who knows something is happening but not why or how or when. We see a lot of Ystad, a lot of Swedish countryside, all of it cold and covered with the dirty remnants of old snow. We see a good deal of Cape Town, too, and the shantytowns where the blacks must live, even if they're police inspectors. We tag along after Wallander in Ystad and Cape Town, watching him laboriously put the pieces together. On those cold days and cold, cold nights around Ystad, cold murder takes place, The final shootout, with a high- powered rifle versus a car, is so startling and well visualized that we're almost as upset and queasy afterwards as Kurt Wallander was. Just as with the book, The White Lioness is as much a vivid and complicated story of the planning and foiling of an assassination as it is a look at what South Africa had been and, with Nelson Mandela, is on the brink of becoming. The movie is part tricky plotting, part police procedural (interspersed with effective sequences of chases and violence) and part mild political primer. The White Lioness worked so well for me because it gives a fine Kurt Wallander by Rolf Lassgard, thoughtful, smart and probably tied too closely to his job for his own good.

there is lot to be said for Swedish made for TV film from the 90s. this particular one is certainly doomed by a rather good novel which it is based on. the screen writing follows the novel rather loosely but still tries to incorporate all the locations and characters of the original source and that is where this film does not work. i am not sure if there was a lot of material shot that ended on the cutting room floor or if the script is actually the choice. either way - it makes the plot complicated and not so very straight without adding excitement. some good writing has gone into this but maybe it would have been better to remove it even further from the novel. the editing especially lacks in craftsmanship. performances are rather good, however. one does get the impression though, that filming partly in cape town seemed to be a nice option for everybody. since Mankell is a very! famous author in scandinavia, one cannot help thinking that the team was under the impression that everything they produce is going to be a success.

This is a drama about an assassination conspiracy that starts in South Africa that finds its way to a countryside police detective. A woman is found murdered in a rural Swedish house. The murder is not the mystery, the target of the assassin is.The film was rather low budget and the editing is a little hard to follow sometimes. It is especially hard to tell sometimes what country you are in if you only speak English like myself. The movie is subtitled in English and as you cross borders in the movie the change in languages are not always good clues as to where you are. Again, better editing might have helped.Despite that it is an excellent drama and should please any foreign film fan.