THE SNOWMAN
Cert 15 Running time 119 minutes ★★
This Scandinavian thriller deserves some sort of award for being the most terrific-looking yet listless movie of the year.
Norway is a gorgeously crisp winter wonderland and Christmas-card pretty, but watching Michael Fassbender’s grim struggle through thigh– high snowdrifts is a perfect illustration of my viewing experience.
Perhaps the heat of the chase was lost in translation. It’s a Chinese/Swedish/UK co-production adapted from a Norwegian bestseller and stars the German/Irish actor as an alcoholic police detective.
He’s in plodding pursuit of a serial killer whose signature is finding the time to build a coffee bean-decorated snowman at the scene of each grisly murder.
Rebecca Ferguson plays his fellow cop but they don’t generate any heat with which to thaw the chilly, silly and sombre storytelling.
The opening scene sets up an intrigue of sex, violence and voyeurism and although there are bloody moments, this is an anaemic exercise as you could possibly wish to avoid.