I ran into someone over the weekend who said to me, “We just
came from seeing ‘The Snowman.’ With all the people in it, I didn’t believe it
could be as bad as everyone’s saying it is.
Man, I was wrong.” Yes…yes he was.
With approximately 10 weeks left in the 2017 movie season,
Tomas Alfredson’s “The Snowman” has vaulted to the top of my worst films of the
year list. Sure, you can find movies that were more poorly made, contain
stilted performances or cheap special effects.
But with the talent attached to this feature, it falls so far short of
expectations that it can’t help but be held in disdain and viewed in disbelief.
Based on the novel by Jo Nesbo – the seventh in a series
featuring his troubled detective Harry Hole – “Snowman” is directed by
Alfredson, who has the masterful horror film “Let the Right One In” to his
credit as well as the complex John Le Carre adaptation “Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy,” and features a strong cast led by Micheal Fassbender, Rebecca
Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, J.K. Simmons and Val Kilmer. The three
screenwriters Peter Straughan (“Tinker”), Hossein Amini (“Drive”) and Soren
Sviestrup (“The Killing”) obviously know how to fashion a script and the
project proved so intriguing that Martin Scorsese was interested in directing
it. (This is why he has an executive
producer credit – he developed the project for a while and then moved on.)
So what went wrong?
Why does this film move at a glacial pace? Why is it that so many
seemingly key questions in this mystery go unanswered or are simply never
mentioned again? Why do members of the cast base their performances on a series
of stern, pensive gazes that are to connote thinking deep thoughts? And do we really need another serial killer
whose machinations are so elaborate during the climax that so many, many pieces
have to fall in place for him to make a grand statement? (In case you’re wondering, the answer is
“No.”)
Really, there is no rhyme or reasons as to why some films
work and others don’t. Every single
movie that’s put into production is a huge risk, as sure-fire things end up
bombing (“John Carter” anyone?) while run-of-the mill movies become mega-hits
(“My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”) As screenwriter William Goldman points out in his
classic Hollywood tome “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” “Nobody knows
anything.”
Sometimes the stars align and sometimes they
don’t and in the case of “The Snowman,” despite all its assets, it just wasn’t
in the cards that this would come together.
While everything falls in to place for sports teams on a winning streak,
the opposite is true for those who can’t win a game. The same goes for the
movies. Instead of a fortuitous instant
in which everyone was able to produce their best work, everyone involved here
was off and just phoned it in. One thing’s for certain, the mystery surrounding
how this movie went wrong is far more intriguing than the one these misguided
characters are stumbling around trying to solve.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2017.
