The Keeper of Lost Causes

The Keeper of Lost Causes launches a new franchise of lurid, realistic police thrillers from Denmark (by novelist Jussi Adler-Olsen), broiling in the wake of The Dragoon Tattoo gal.

The hero, Carl (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), is your standard issue world-weary cop, who has nothing left in his life but his bleak job. His wife dumped him (for a gallerist!!), his best friend is dead and his ex-partner crippled, both the latter from his last botched homicide case. As usual, his brilliance lies in his disdain for convention, which means he’s hindered rather than helped by his superiors, here not just the police hierarchy but the Swedish and Danish governments.

To mark time till he retires he’s banished to the basement to go through the motions of reviewing cold cases. To none of our surprise he clutches the case of a woman scholar presumed to have drowned herself. By film’s end he frees her from five years of murderous captivity. Offered his homicide post back, Carl declines, preferring to remain in the basement as… The Solver of Lost Cases. The film's title might equally refer to the villain, who sadistically imprisons the woman who as a child unwittingly caused both her and his parents' death in a car crash.

The twist is that our hero’s partner is a practicing Moslem, Assad (Fares Fares). The competent, smart, amiable fellow proves more civilized than his embittered Danish partner. He’s clearly written in to counter the fear of the burgeoning — and perhaps threatening — Moslem community in the Scandinavian countries. In contrast to the virtuous Moslem detective, the killer is a pure Scandinavian behemoth, in the Dolph Lundgren mold.

Because director Mikkel Norgaard intercuts the investigation with flashbacks that show us what originally happened, then cuts between the cops and the imprisoned, we’re more aware than the characters of the pressure of time. The villain is about to snuff her when the heroes close in.
     The woman’s plight and the villain’s formidable physical and technological prowess make for a compelling drama. Ultimately, though, this is just a familiar tale powerfully told. It’s rather a polished exercise of the genre than a classic that deploys the generic conventions for wider relevance.