(SHORT) NEW YORK MOVIE JOURNAL (Mid-June 2016)

[Chris Knipp]

THE ABSENT ONE/FASANDRAEBERNE (Mikkel Nørgaard 2014). Number two in the trilogy, with a cat Carl names Cat and a pro-active female secretary called Rose (Johanne Louise Schmidt) added to humanize Department Q - now an admired part of the police department. This episode's theme is partly corruption in high places, since it begins with an elite boarding school where a quartet of brutes is born, the villain-leader winding up a very rich young man called Ditlev Pram, played by the astonishingly versatile Pilou Asbæk of A Hyjacking. Carl and Assad of course are solving an old crime, the murder of two young twins, with various complications. I found this plot more than a little hard to follow, the series' penchant for sudden unannounced flashbacks adding to the confusion, but the story takes us into multiple versions of the dark side in an agreeable manner, with rapes, faked rapes and nasty beatings. Winds up with a mad chase to an underground parking lot. Watched at IFC Center 20 June 2016.



A CONSPIRACY OF FAITH/FLASKEPOST FRA P ( Hans Petter Moland 2016). The same police cast but a new director. This is the most disturbing and complex of the trio. It begins with a message in a bottle from disappeared children, and moves on to manipulation of Christian sect members by a terrifying serial killer who is a saintly messiah type: hats off to Pål Sverre Hagen, who plays this deeply creepy villain, known only as Johannes, with stunning conviction. Because the issue of faith arises, Assad and Carl have violent arguments, Assad a practicing Muslim, while Carl believes in nothing. But does he? The film digs deep into Carl's dogged passion and shows it also must come from profound faith and morality. Lets out all the stops with a car-and-train chaise, ferocious cruelty and violence, drownings and stabbings and helicopters tracking a watery lair. This three-film experience is the most intense dark fun I've had at IFC since the "Red Riding" trilogy, and I might agree though I watched them over two days the "Department Q" films may go best when "binge-watched" as Noel Murray says on AV Club, in the sense that they are above all a continuous portrait of this moody, troubled, brilliant and driven detective; the films pivot around the superb characterization of the actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas, whose grumpy coldness is just what makes you care about him. Note the Danish titles all mean different, more indirect, things. The first is "Woman in a Cage," the second is "Pheasant Shooters," and the third is "Message in a Bottle from P." Watched right after The Absent One 20 June 2016 at IFC Center.