The Snowman
Michael Fassbender plays a drunken Oslo (Norway) detective with a history of drinking in this snow-bound slog. His character's name is Harry. Harry Hole. And that's all you need to know to rate this movie.
By the time the killer is revealed in this sullen slog through the slush, trust me, you won't give a single snowy damn.
The premise is so promising. A serial killer takes someone out on the first heavy snowfall of the year and leaves grim snowmen as his calling card. The cast is solid including Fassbender, J K Simmons (who is in damn near every movie these days, where does he find the time?), Rebecca Ferguson (who will recover from this debacle), Toby Jones, Chloe Sevigny and a fucked up looking Val Kilmer whose voice didn't even match what was happening on screen (clearly overdubbed and I don't know why). It was sad to see all that wasted in this god awful whiteout.
I can forgive a bad movie. I have a harder time forgiving a movie that obviously put a lot into production only to flub it up this badly. The herrings that were strewn throughout and, I suppose, put there to keep you guessing were idiotic and pointless. The Oslo Olympics side story was, again, pointless. The inclusion of Simmon's character (they all had stupid names like Artne Slovekkos and Deeter Beetlebrosk which made it even harder to follow) was an absolute waste and added nothing to the story at all. Kilmer's storyline was a dead end, even when his relation to the current situation was curtly broached and then essentially abandoned.
I'm telling you not to watch it, so it doesn't matter if I slightly spoil some of it. Toward the end, Fassbender comes up behind the killer who has this wire ratchet device around a woman's neck. Fassbender has a gun. The guy has a wire that requires him to spin a dial and click it slowly closed. Fassbender could emptied an entire clip into the guy's face, reloaded and emptied a second clip before he could have done any damage with his pissy little wire. But what does Fassbender do? Surrenders the gun.
The end of the killer is so stupid and nonsensical that it is completely laughable. Like a really bad joke.
None of the motivations for any of the characters are clearly explained. Why is fassbender such a drunk that he sleeps on the sidewalk when he has an apartment? Who gives a fleeing flap about any of the hideously ugly kids that are sprinkled here and there? What makes Fassbender's character a good detective? Was it his bleary eyes or his never-changing schlub wardrobe?
This was a bad movie, one of the worst I've seen in a while.