Anyone else find it hard to believe that the woman cop at the end sees the hole in his story and either doesn't work through the implications or chooses to ignore them? Even though the implications include he and the true criminal's having a reason to frame a third party, the young boyfriend (when she even sees that the boyfriend story has a problem)? And then she thinks it's enough to plonk his shell case down meaningfully? Aieee!
I think you've missed something there, the real killer was exposed, Holt, so the boy had to be released, we don't see that but logically speaking that must have happened. What remains is the killing of Jonas' colleague, Holt was also blamed for that one, we don't see it but we can conclude that. Only the woman cop knew that Jonas must have killed him but decided it was an accident due to the fog and lack of sleep, this was not enough for her to expose him; she liked him, obviously. No real harm done (...).
Norwegian (Scandinavian) movies tend to skip obvious parts, the viewer can add those by using his imagination without coming to the wrong conclusions.
She only had a shell case, that’s not enough to prove anything. She probably figured it all out but because there where no witness or evidence she couldn’t do anything about it except to try to make him feel really bad about what he had done.
shareI hated the ending of this movie. The rest of it I liked, but the end was just infuriating.
"You're not right in the head/
and nor am I/ and this is why/
This is why I like you"
That shell casing would've nailed him to a guilty verdict. Wasn't he the only one in their group carrying around that kind of weapon? I need to see this again. My memory of it is just as foggy as the scene y'all mention. I didn't mind the ending, though. I definitely thought it was better than the American remake (mainly because I dislike Robin Williams's acting).
Do The Mussolini! Headkick!
She totally knew what happened, and she gave him the shell because she was protecting him. It was a "gift" as she said.
The kid is let go, I mean geez, Jonas finds the girl's clothes hidden in Holt's house and hands them to the cop. Everyone knows it was Holt who killed the girl.
And so they all assume it was Holt who killed Vik.
Only she knows it was Jonas because the bullet comes from a Swedish gun and none of the Norwegian cops carry guns anyway.
Exactly. She gave him the shell casing simply to let him know that she had figured it all out, and even though she wasnt going to do anything about it she still wanted him to know that she knew.
shareJonas was a great cop, and prosecuting him would mean losing him and his work. He would probably prove it was an accident, but he would lose his credibility in public, media and among criminals. He was s man with conscience that would torture him as long as he lived, though he wasn't responsible for Vik's death. Leaving him free means giving him a chance to do more good work - what good could he make in jail? She let him know she knew, and that might stimulate him to be more careful, more honest, more successful, knowing he was given one more chance. This is Scandinavian way, so different from the cultures that only seek revenge and blood, full prisons and execution performances.
shareI think skarsgard's character killed tanja. He forgets.
shareHe came from Sweden after Tanja's death, and he was not alone (so it's not possible that he came before and nobody knew it).
share[deleted]
What about the gun that Engstrom planted under the boyfriend's bed? When the police realized that Holt was the killer, did they assume that Holt planted the gun under the bed? And what about the fingerprint on the gun? We never learned whose fingerprint it was. Was it Holt's fingerprint or Engstrom's fingerprint? If it was Holt's gun and Holt's fingerprint, why did the female cop have any suspicion that Engstrom had shot his partner, even after she found the Swedish bullet cartridge?
shareThis was a machine gun questioning...
And we are talking about two different things. You are talking about evidence that police might have collected against Engström, and you are right, but I don't see anything illogical. Police really got the evidence, there was in fact no suspicion - Norwegians knew the truth. They just let him go. Now, if that was morally or legally correct - that is another question which was also analysed on this board (I won't repeat what I wrote on March 24th).
But in my last post I only answered to the possibility that Engström killed Tanja. And I can see no posibility.
She wasn't entirely suspicious at first, just didn't believe the scenario that she was told about the shooting.
Jonas was the only one on the scene that would have had Swedish-made shells, and he wasn't supposed to. When he found the revolver near his dying partner, he picked it up by the barrel - but I'm not convinced that it was his print on the barrel because that surely would've been investigated.
I think her action with placing the casing on the table was to signify that she knew he had had his gun with him and that he was lying about what transpired when his partner was shot - and that she wasn't going to pursue it. The bullet they think they pulled from the body matches the revolver, so she wasn't suspicious that he had killed his partner, just that he was lying about the scenario to cover up that he had a gun he shouldn't have had with him. We knew he was covering up a murder (accidental), she didn't.
i sleep nowshare
I don't think she was protecting him. She knew he killed his partner and covered it up. Whether or not it was on purpose was irrelevant. The bullet casing is her only evidence, though. I think she was interested mostly in what Engstrom's reaction would be to this revelation. He's flying back, and this is all she's got. Being the egotistical bastard he is, he gives a rather indifferent reaction to her discovery. If he's not going to accept responsibility, she's in no place to pursue him, as the only one who has figured out what he did.
Personally, I preferred this ending to the one in the Christopher Nolan version, where we're given an neat, clean little closure to the whole thing by both Dormer and Finch dying. Here, Engstrom, a younger and more conceded individual, takes out his frustration on everyone around him, creating something of a monster out of a basically good policeman.
I liked reading this thread, it is an intelligent discussion of one of my favorite movies. However, I feel a need to comment even though the discussion is two years dead.
The female detective (name eludes me) had nothing more than the shell casing and Jonas' odd behavior. She could only have reasonably come to the conclusion, from the evidence she had, that Jonas improperly carried a gun, fired a shot at Holt (which missed), and fudged the story to cover it up.
Due to Jonas' tampering, the record will show that the bullets in Vik and the wounded policeman came from Holt's revolver. The only way that anyone could come to the conclusion that the bullet didn't come from Vik would be to have intricate forensic examinations don on it. The residue of the bullet would come back as dog, and not human, blood. Even then, that would only prove that the bullet is planted, they would still have to work to prove that it was Jonas who did it. Process of elimination or suspicion isn't evidence.
But, that is only if the test is made. Why would anyone order any such test on the bullet? The only person who could possibly have thought the bullet may have been planted was the female detective. No one else had the shell casing, no one at all had reason to think that the frame-up extended beyond Holt planting a gun (get to that later) under Eilert's bed.
The female detective did not have much. All of Jonas' odd behavior can be explained away by either the stress of his partner's death, his fear of people knowing he carried the gun, or that he (like everyone else) had fallen for Holt's set-up (remember, he was the killer, he put the police on Eilert, and, unless that fingerprint is Jonas', it is his. Given the fact that no one has arrested Jonas, people evidently believe that Holt planted the gun). The only thing left that could prove anything is the shell casing.
But what does that prove? It is a shell casing of the brand and caliber which happens to be used by the police of Jonas' country. The casing could be linked to Jonas' gun if they had the gun to test against. But how would she get the gun? Unless Jonas had shot someone before (which is unlikely, even in higher crime-rate America cops rarely shoot people), there would not be any ballistic report in any old shooting file - they would actually have to fire a bullet from Jonas' gun to compare.
Unless they raid Jonas' hotel room, which none of the adoring local police would want to do, they would have to get the gun through the Swedish government. You need the Norway equivilant of probable cause, and the Swedish equivilant of probable cause, and a little more than that because Sweden probably wouldn't all to happy to give evidence that one of their finest is a crook.
Probable Cause alone would be hard to achieve. How many registered 9mm pistols are there in Norway. How many places sell that brand of ammo? Couldn't the casing have come a target shooter weeks before the incident? Or a year? Is there a shred of evidence, other than that casing, that Jonas' gun had done anything other than lie in his bottom drawer while he went to Norway to help you solve a vicious murder?
And even if she went to all this trouble, how could she know that the gun would produce the right casing. Jonas is a professional, he would know that the only thing he would have to do is replace the ejector and such in order to prevent a ballistic match.
Next, why would she want to? The man just lost his partner and hasn't slept for the last couple of days. Anyone can make the mistake of telling a white lie in order to prevent himself from getting in trouble. No harm was done after all, the killer was caught in the end. And even if he did fire, it would have been in self-defense, against the lunatic who had killed two people and wounded a third. All of these thoughts would make her less likely to chase after him.
All of Jonas' actions that she had seen could be explained away. He lied about how far away he was from Vik - it was an honest mistake he was in shock and so forth.
I don't believe that she thought Jonas had anything to do with evidence tampering, or that he shot Vik.
"The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" Psalm 14:1
I agree with xfuture, in that the shell casing could only prove that Engstrom carried and fired a gun that was not permitted. The police found the murder victim's clothes in Holt's house, so Holt is believed to be the murderer, and Eilert (the boyfriend) is now free.
But I'd just like to add that there is still ambiguity (or mystery, if you will) left in the ending. We really don't know if Engstrom is going to get away scot free.
The policewoman, Hagen, said that there was a fingerprint on the barrel of the gun that is not Eilert's. It could be Holt's fingerprint (in which case Engstrom is safe)... but when if it is Engstrom's?
If it turns out that it is not a match for Holt's prints, wouldn't they test it against a database of prints? And aren't all police and law enforcement staff in that database (unless that's only an American policy)?
One more note of ambiguity: Engstrom has committed indiscretions in the past. Maybe he was never caught and nothing was ever proven, but the thought of being exposed haunts him; he cannot stand to have his reputation sullied. There's a suggestion of paranoia weighing on him, which is depicted more than once in the movie: He hears the other police gossip and laugh about him; passersby on the street glare at him accusingly and with suspicion. Conceivably, he could snap under a "Telltale Heart" type of torment, where he simply owns up to everything just to escape the tension of being found out.