This movie is from 1976, still Scandinavian movies were mostly known for their unrestrained sexuality or philosophical / religious artists like Bergman; but not for an action movie.
As much as I admired Bo Widerberg as director I had never seen him directing an action thriller and (it should not surprise me) he was brilliant in that.
The story follows basically a police procedural to capture a cop killer. As always in Widerberg there are social issues all over. Specially about police abuse.
However it is quite strange to see how good this "brute" polices treat criminals compared to the likes of Dirty Harry or any other American police story.
Here, an incarcerated man claims he has to be freed because it was over six hours without a case and the police free him. Another criminal is carried to the interrogation room without handcuffs and the guy insults the officer. But it seems for Sweden at that time everything else was consider abuse of power.
In the final confrontation to catch the shooter. Nobody dare to kill the killer because it was punishable by law (even when the guy commit a massacre already).
Going back, the movie follows a police procedural with such realistic small details that feels that everything is real. Even dialogs are quite simple and natural.
By two thirds of the movie, the killer gets on a roof and starts killing people. That part of the movie is simply one of the best I saw in my life (and I saw a lot of movies) . The action is perfectly choreographed in a very realistic way; with camera angles that make you feel you are hanging high on a building. The helicopter attack and fall made 44 years ago is just perfect and impressive.
Even how the killer is catch is totally unexpected as it was the last few words at the end.
On top of the entertainment part (the pace is slow compared with actual thrillers but still interesting) there is reminder of less violent times where government respected people. Something it seems government officials had forgotten for a long time.
Review of Man on the Roof
