The Snowman (2017)

[Proclone]

 

So I just got back from seeing this and despite the name and the snowy vistas that fill this film, this movie is a hot mess.  I didn't know much about the movie going in save having seen the trailer a few times. I like Fassbender and Ferguson as actors and I enjoy a good thriller so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  I wound up being eligible for a free ticket and boy am I glad I didn't actually pay to see this.   The only mystery is how so many talented actors wound up in this film.  I'm not going to spoil the plot because I'm not sure I understood it and not for lack of trying.  The plot just doesn't make much sense.  I started googling the movie when I got home just to find out how this came into existence and apparently it's based on a novel.  I'm not familiar with the novel or it's plot but either massive amounts of the book were left out or there a lot added in and I'm not sure which (or the plot of the book also makes no sense).  It feels like there were two very similar stories about detectives chasing a very similar killer, one centering on Rebecca Fergenson's characters and the other centering on Fassbender.  Instead of picking one the filmmakers decided to combine the two and edit it in the strangest ways and then not give any real payoff to Ferguson's subplot. 

And when I say the editing is strange I mean it is truly bizarre. There will random close-ups of a person's bare feet or other objects that you think must have some significance or there wouldn't be a close-up, but no. Or suddenly the film will cut to a flashback with characters we have never met in the present with only a "Six years ago" as on-screen text as the only clue that we are even in a flashback.  And while they do (sort of) wind up connecting to the present murders, they don't initially seem to have any connection to the plot at all and really could have been taken out without any impact on the story (honestly I think the plot actually would have made more sense without the backstory) and they contain a truly bizarre appearance by Val Kilmer.  Apparently, Kilmer was still recovering from mouth cancer at the time this filmed so, instead of either recasting the role or not using the flashbacks, they decided they should dub his voice and then do the worst possible job of it.  Kilmer's first scene has him sitting having a conversation with another character he only speaks a few line in this scene and the first two times it cuts abruptly to the back of his head and you hear a voice that couldn't possibly sound less like Kilmer if they tried.  The third he speaks in the scene you are greeted to not only the jarring voice but also the fact that Kilmer's lips do not sync with the voice at all.  It looks like a bad English dub of a 70's kung-fu movie.  The few other times Kilmer appears on screen he either doesn't speak (including one time when his arrival is narrated by police radios for no reason) or you have the same atrocious dubbing.  

The plot most just meanders along with no tension or sense of urgency (the trailer makes it seem much more of a thriller than it is).  There is nothing new or interesting about any of the characters.  Fassbender plays the typical alcoholic cop but we aren't really told much about him.  Not why he drinks, nothing about his past.  The only thing we do know is that he's a fall down drunk and he still has an amicable relationship with his ex-girlfriend and her son.  Ferguson's Katrine is even worse.  I think they were trying to make the character mysterious, but they wound up with bland.  We do find out that her father was also an alcoholic cop, and you would think that would in some way inform how she deals with Fassbender's Harry Hole (insert joke of your choice here, the film takes the name seriously), but it doesn't.  Her character is rather pointless and 

Spoiler

I can't say that I felt much other than apathy when she was killed.  No, that's not completely true. I did feel annoyed once I realized that her investigating J. K. Simmons' (who was the only actor doing a Norwegian accent BTW) character was going to have no relation to the main plot and never be resolved.

 

They try to give a "twist" ending but a twist ending only works if the twist makes sense and this twist doesn't make much sense.  It also leads to one the most anticlimactic endings I've seen in a film in a while.  This movie is really quite bad.  It seems like it was filmed off of a not particularly good first draft of a novel written during national novel writing month which is the only explanation I have for the presence of Kilmer's scenes they were used to pad the word count.  I have no idea if the actual novel on which this based is good or bad but the script was disjointed and in no way original.  The acting isn't bad, but there's also nothing for the actors to really work with either.  I was very disappointed with this film.  It completely wasted the talent of its entire cast on a non-interesting barely coherent plot.

*Edited to add*  Now that I watch the trailer again I'm fairly certain that none of the dialogue that is a voice over in the trailer (basically anytime you are not seeing the actors mouths) is actually in the movie.  Ferguson's character doesn't try to "lure" the killer out (the scene where that voice over occurs is taken out of context) and come to think of it I don't think the murderer is actually referred to as the snowman killer in the film at all.  Nor is the voice of the killer saying "You could have saved them, I gave you all the clues" in the film. Despite the trailer implying it, the killer doesn't really play games with the police save for sending one note and reporting one of the victims missing before she is killed.  I assume that these were recorded later to make the movie seem more like the thriller it is marketed as.  Which probably means the studio knew exactly how crappy this movie is.   

[wanderingstar]

I’ll preface my comments by saying that I’m a big fan of Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole* series. I’ve read several of the novels in the series, including The Snowman. While not the best book in the series, The Snowman is still a solid thriller. This film, OTOH, is a mess. Just a few of the thoughts that went through my mind as I watched this:

• They gutted the character of Harry. Yes, he’s the alcoholic genius detective trope, but he’s also sardonic and loving (in his inept way), and a mentor to his colleagues. But apparently the writers couldn’t be bothered to give the character any traits beyond sloppy drunk.
• Michael Fassbender as Harry Hole was just all the way wrong. Harry isn’t supposed to be handsome. He’s supposed to be attractive, but in spite of his so-so looks. He’s supposed to be a mess, and sorry, but giving Fassbender a scruffy jacket and throwing him in a puddle was not very convincing in this regard.
• Where was the world building? Nesbø’s books spend time building the world around Harry. We get to know his colleagues, so we understand their relationships with him and why they tolerate his demanding nature. Were the other characters even given names?
• Harry’s partner, Katrine, is a pretty compelling character in the book, but they completely flatten her in this movie. Rebecca Ferguson deserved better than this. All the actors did, really.
• What they did to the plot is criminal. The plot in the book is very complicated. I can see why they wanted to streamline it. But this isn’t merely a streamlined plot. They hacked it up to the point where it makes no sense. The killer’s motivation, which was crystal clear in the book, is a muddle in this movie.
• British and American actors playing Norwegians. Make. It. Stop.

Spoiler

Katrine’s fate also annoyed me. If they were planning to make more of these movies, surely they know that Katrine survives to the end of this book, and appears in subsequent novels. Guess they know how bad this movie is and that they’re unlikely to make more.

I can’t believe I waited 10 years to see Harry Hole on screen and this is what I got. Then again, given the way the Hollywood Industrial Complex operates, I can.

Quote

(honestly I think the plot actually would have made more sense without the backstory)

Agreed. The backstory is in the book, but it could easily have been left out of the movie, or just alluded to.

 

*Yes, that’s the character’s real name. It’s pronounced "ho-lay" in Norwegian. Hole is the name of the town Harry’s family is from.

Edited October 22, 2017 by Gillian Rosh

[HunterHunted]

Why The Snowman is a mess.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/the-snowman-director-is-bad-at-selling-the-snowman.html

http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/the-snowman/52724/the-snowman-what-on-earth-went-wrong

It looks like Scorsese optioned it and began pre-preproduction (working on financing and getting a script) in 2010 or 2011. The movie began filming in 2015. It's been kicking around in Scorsese's hands for awhile and he never managed to make it not a mess before he dropped out as the director.

[Proclone]

8 hours ago, Gillian Rosh said:

I’ll preface my comments by saying that I’m a big fan of Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole* series. I’ve read several of the novels in the series, including The Snowman. While not the best book in the series, The Snowman is still a solid thriller. This film, OTOH, is a mess. Just a few of the thoughts that went through my mind as I watched this:

• They gutted the character of Harry. Yes, he’s the alcoholic genius detective trope, but he’s also sardonic and loving (in his inept way), and a mentor to his colleagues. But apparently the writers couldn’t be bothered to give the character any traits beyond sloppy drunk.
• Michael Fassbender as Harry Hole was just all the way wrong. Harry isn’t supposed to be handsome. He’s supposed to be attractive, but in spite of his so-so looks. He’s supposed to be a mess, and sorry, but giving Fassbender a scruffy jacket and throwing him in a puddle was not very convincing in this regard.
• Where was the world building? Nesbø’s books spend time building the world around Harry. We get to know his colleagues, so we understand their relationships with him and why they tolerate his demanding nature. Were the other characters even given names?
• Harry’s partner, Katrine, is a pretty compelling character in the book, but they completely flatten her in this movie. Rebecca Ferguson deserved better than this. All the actors did, really.
• What they did to the plot is criminal. The plot in the book is very complicated. I can see why they wanted to streamline it. But this isn’t merely a streamlined plot. They hacked it up to the point where it makes no sense. The killer’s motivation, which was crystal clear in the book, is a muddle in this movie.
• British and American actors playing Norwegians. Make. It. Stop.

  Hide contents

Katrine’s fate also annoyed me. If they were planning to make more of these movies, surely they know that Katrine survives to the end of this boo, and appears in subsequent novels. Guess they know how bad this movie is and that they’re unlikely to make more.

 

I can’t believe I waited 10 years to see Harry Hole on screen and this is what I got. Then again, given the way the Hollywood Industrial Complex operates, I can.

Agreed. The backstory is in the book, but it could easily have been left out of the movie, or just alluded to.

 

*Yes, that’s the character’s real name. It’s pronounced ho-lay in Norwegian. Hole is the name of the town Harry’s family is from.

I looked up the plot synopsis for the novel and I have to say, it sounds like it would make a good movie if they had actually used that plot.  I've also read that apparently the production ran out of time or money (or both) and 10-15% of the script was never filmed.  I assume this 10-15% contains the killers motivations and how they connect to Hole, Katrine, and J.K Simmons character.  I'm not sure why if the filmmakers knew they were running out of time or money decided to film what they did film and skip what they skipped.  It seems like a crappy concert was less important to film than the killer's motivation.  They sure didn't seem to know how to prioritize what was important and what was not.  And I agree there was no world building, the is no reason this was set in Oslo except I was told it was Oslo.  The only thing I learned about Norway from this film is that Norwegians apparently like really crappy music (at least all the music played in this film was crappy).  And my googling did also reveal the proper pronunciation of Harry's name, but it is pronounced as Hole (as in I'm going to go dig a) in the film.  I'm not sure they chose that since they had to know how it would sound to British and American audiences.  It just seems like no one cared how this movie turned out.  At least no one on the production side, the actors seem to be doing their best but as I said before they don't have much to work with.  It seemed like they just shrugged at every mistake or problem. Kilmer can't speak on film, *shrug* let's poorly dub him.  The character's name is pronounced Ho-lay but we've been saying it Hole, *shrug* no one will find the name Harry Hole funny.  We didn't film a good percentage of the script *shrug* I'm sure we can make everything work with editing.  

[BookWoman56]

I did love all the scenery shots and the sense of isolation in the snow. I had not read the book but probably will now on the assumption that even if it turns out not to be wonderful, the plot cannot possibly be as badly contrived as the movie's was.  I can't really fault anybody's acting; on the contrary, it seemed like a waste of talent on a script that just fell flat. But there was a scene when a character is unexpectedly kind to Hole, and the second the thought flashed through my mind that the character was being extremely kind and helpful when Hole had no right to expect that kindness, I realized where the plot was going. Not a fan of that kind of coincidence in terms of who ends up being the killer. My only other take-away is pretty shallow, but holy fuck, Val Kilmer looked bad as a result of his illness. As noted above, the dubbing of his lines was botched so it didn't sync up with the movement of his lips, with the result that every time Kilmer's character was speaking on screen, a few people in the audience would laugh at dialogue that was supposed to be serious. 

[krankydoodle]

This just popped up on HBO and I watched it thinking it would fall into the so-bad-it's-fun category, but instead it's bad in a depressing way what with the waste of good actors and an interesting setting, disjointed storytelling, an ill-looking Val Kilmer, and the vain hope of a sequel teased in the final scene. Ugh. At least I still laugh when I think of the Mister Police marketing.

[afterbite]

Also caught it on HBO. It's more of a parody of a thriller than an actual thriller (even down to the lead's name, which I know comes from the book and isn't pronounced that way in its original language, but they straight up went with and had multiple characters say "Harry Hole!"). Every super serious cut to a snowman gave me the giggles. I can't believe they had this many good actors in a film that managed to be this bad. So glad I didn't shell out for this mess at the theater.