A girl is dead, and someone is washing her hair, removing all traces of her death. Soon, her corpse is discovered,. Swedish detective Stellan Skarsgård and his partner, Sverre Anker Ousdal are called in to lead the investigation in Trondheim in Norway. They set a trap for the killer, but when it's sprung, the killer flees before they can identify him, and Skarsgård shoots and kills Ousdal. In the never-ending day of Trondheim's Arctic-Circle site, Skarsgård must try to catch the killer and evade arrest himself.
There's a nightmarish quality to the light outside, never changing, which makes this seem a walking hallucination. What, after all, is a Swedish cop doing on a Norwegian murder investigation? Some fine performers, hitherto unknown to me -- because how much Norwegian cinema have I seen? --perform their roles in a fashion that seems disconnected from Skarsgård 's impassive-seeming detective.
There's a nightmarish quality to the light outside, never changing, which makes this seem a walking hallucination. What, after all, is a Swedish cop doing on a Norwegian murder investigation? Some fine performers, hitherto unknown to me -- because how much Norwegian cinema have I seen? --perform their roles in a fashion that seems disconnected from Skarsgård 's impassive-seeming detective.