Claudio Carvalho
In The Hague, Holland, the new chief of Europol Sellberg (Lennart Hjulström) broadcasts a tough speech against the third wave of crimes in Europe, promising to suffocate the schemes of powerful criminals. He invites his former detective and friend Johan Falk (Jakob Eklund) for a meeting, with the intention to join him to his team. Meanwhile, the executive Rebecca (Irina Björklund) accidentally opens one correspondence of her mate, Kane (Ben Pullen), and finds that he cleans illegal money for European mobsters. When she decides to disclose her discoveries to Europol, his life is jeopardized by the associates of her boy-friend, but Rebecca is rescued by Johan. They have to fight against the organized crime to save their lives and Johan's family.I decided to watch "Den Tredje Vågen" on video to kill time in the rainy Saturday's afternoon in Rio de Janeiro. I love European movies, but due to the lack of tradition in the action genre, I had minor expectation with this film. However, this movie is a surprisingly good Swedish-British thriller, full of action and usual exaggeration of the Hollywood films. The absolutely unknown cast has great performances, the Swedish Irina Björklund is very gorgeous and "Den Tredje Vågen" is an excellent entertainment. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Garras da Corrupção" ("Claws of the Corruption")
sarastro7
Sweden has a literary tradition of very high-quality political crime and action thrillers, starring heroes like Martin Beck, Carl Hamilton - and Johan Falk. All of them have been turned into movies, and the latest trilogy with Johan Falk - Noll Tolerans, Livvakterna and Den Tredje Vågen - continues the honor roll. These are very well-produced and exciting action movies; certainly impressive by any Scandinavian standard.They are not perfect, though. Good as they are, they are marred by formulaic elements, like extremely evil bad guys who always threaten to beat and/or kill women, which is "the easy way" for a writer to show how evil the bad guys are. As a result, the realism suffers. The third movie in particular also gets unrealistic in the dramatic finale, with Helén (Falk's girlfriend, mostly an innocent bystander) suddenly turning into an expert pickpocket and "undercover operative". The massive riots in Munich were also a bit over the top, I thought, and not really necessary for the story, except to allow the writer to avoid having Falk do all the dirty work of disposing of the bad guys.But even so, these movies are highly entertaining and well worth watching. The movies get progressively better, building excitement as they go. The independent security force in Livvakterna was very cool, and the international action in Den Tredje Vågen, with Nicholas Farrell's well-acted character switching sides because he's all integrity, was very satisfying.7 out of 10.
jjgeurtsen
"The Third Wave" is a strong European action-thriller that can measure itself with almost every American production. Organized crime is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in Europe and the newly appointed leader of the international police force Europol is determined to attack the criminals head on. Unfortunately he himself is killed when three professional hit men try to kill Rebecca, a young woman who had fled England to get away from her very powerful 'white collar' criminal husband. The Swedish inspector Johan Falk (a former colleague of the assassinated Europol-leader) witnesses the hit. He kills one of the hit men and flees the scene Rebecca. Now Johan, Rebecca and Johan's wife and daughter are in danger and because they don't know who to trust, their first priority is just to stay alive.As said, "The Third Wave' is a good film for a broad audience. The story gave the filmmakers the opportunity to put in a lot of action and because of that, is has become a fast film that doesn't have any weak moments. There are 5 different languages involved, but (with subtitles)it doesn't feel like a foreign film. You won't be able to see it in theaters, so you'll have to look for it at your local videostore.
thrix
The top-budget Swedish movie of all time- "The third wave", with a budget of ~35 million SEK (errh some $4.5 million...) scores well for a Swedish action movie. It's predecessors is among the top of the later years' movies and "Third wave" continues the work of art. Jacob Eklund is as before excellent in his role as Johan Falk, we have a tight script and the plot is both interesting and somewhat applicable to reality. Of course there are some flaws, and the storyline gets a little messy at times, but overall I was very satisfied and I am happy that the capacity is there for making high-class movies although the budgets compared to US numbers are substantially smaller. it also proves that money does not equal quality. 8/10