Grittily downbeat Scandinavian thrillers have recently become a literary, television and cinematic phenomenon. The novelist Stieg Larsson gets much of the credit, but so too should Erik Skjoldbjrg s debut feature, which made enough of a splash in 1997 to earn itself a Hollywood remake starring Al Pacino - but, as so often, it s the original that s the best. In Troms, in the far north of Norway, a teenage girl is murdered by an unusually meticulous killer, and the local police decide they need expert assistance - but criminal investigator Engstrm (Stellan Skarsgrd) quickly finds that his Swedish accent and unfamiliarity with the territory mark him as an awkward outsider. When a colleague accidentally dies during a shootout in thick fog, Engstrm uses this as an excuse to start tampering with evidence, a slippery slope whose psychological downside is intensified by the oppressive 24-hour daylight playing havoc with his sleep...