This film is made up of spare parts, but it's still an improvement on the book. It appears that, in turning a book into a movie, it is possible to substitute good acting and production values for sloppy writing. The first 20-odd pages of the book were well-done, and that is replicated in the film. The first 30 minutes or so show a horrific murder scene, and introduce two good, well-acted female characters clashing over the investigation. Near the end of that sequence, the Chinese connection is made, and all credibility goes out the window. The evidence of a Chinese connection is frail & tenuous, but, OK, the scene shifts to Beijing, where we meet a comic-book Chinese villain who is, of course, ruthless, wealthy & powerful for no apparent reason. Actually, "ruthless" can be explained-for the story's purposes-by a violent, xenophobic assault suffered by his father when he was laying track for American railways in the 1860s. This wealthy & powerful guy is maybe 40-45 years old? You do the math. Fortunately,the filmmaker,who is Austrian, opted to omit the book's section set in Africa, which contained some real howlers, and he chooses to end it with the central figure, a Swedish judge, arriving safely back in Stockholm. One peculiarity of this film that can't be blamed on the book's author is the treatment of language. For the US print, of course, the subtitles are in English, but in spite of the settings, i.e., Sweden, China, and very briefly the US, every character on screen speaks German. The Chinese characters are dubbed in German, the lone American character actually speaks good German, and all the Swedes speak serviceable German. Maybe it was made for Austrian TV. Whatever the reason, it was jarring to see Chinese characters, in a subtitled film, delivering lines in German. Another good reason to avoid the scenes set in Africa.
11 Reviews
Not great, but watchable. Definitely didn't need to be 3 hours.
altereggo1233 December 2018
This is an odd thriller. The beginning is gripping-a terrible mass murder on quiet Swedish farm. A judge presiding in a rape case. On the other side of the globe, Chinese billionaires involved in something nefarious. Will it all come together? Well... after three hours, you will see characters and plot lines created and then forgotten, other characters implausibly inserted, and some incredibly strange developments. Oh, and everyone is speaking German, often dubbed. This includes all the Chinese people in Beijing, an American sheriff in Nevada, and the population of Sweden. The villains are a bit cartoonish, and the suspense is sometimes improbable, but I still stuck it out to the end. I just wish it had been a little shorter and a little less farfetched.
Good movie but language treatment a detractor
jim-greulich27 February 2013
I will start by saying that I am a big fan of Swedish film (both movie & TV), as well as loving some of Mankell's other screen adaptations... mainly the Wallander series' (Swedish version). So, by seeing Nyqvist 2nd billed (one of my favorite Nordic actors), Mankell, the production company and main filming location... I naturally expected most of the spoken language to be Swedish. You can imagine how shocked I was when they started up in German! For me, this was very difficult to adjust to. German is a very harsh language to listen to (and I am part German) but more than that, it simply did NOT make sense to have the entire film spoken and dubbed in German. I found myself trying to figure out who was really speaking and who was being dubbed so much that I ended up missing a lot of the English sub-titles. For the record, I don't speak SE or DE... only know a few words in each language. So what I THINK i finally figured out was this... the German actors were speaking German, the Chinese actors were probably speaking Chinese but were dubbed in German (really freaky). What was baffling to me was Nyqvuist... at first it seemed his lips were matching the German being spoken, but then later it did not seem to match up, and to be honest, it didn't sound like his voice to me. I would have to guess then that he was actually speaking Swedish and they dubbed in the German. Just an overall disaster language wise and it really did detract from the movie, at least for me. Without this, I would have easily given this 8 stars as the plot & acting was excellent, as well as some stunning location filming... especially in Stockholm, one of the world's most spectacular looking cities! I'd say that this is well worth a watch for any fan of crime thrillers, Mankell, or just good solid foreign films. One really funny thing I noticed in one scene... you had Nyqvuist, Borsody (the lead character), and a Chinese actor having a 3-way discussion. If my assumptions were correct, they were speaking 3 different languages through the entire scene... that must have been a very bizarre situation indeed! ;)
Disappointing
clever4us30 December 2011
Warning: Spoilers
The movie slowly but surely develops historic context. The historic context is of vital importance for the whole movie to make sense. Unfortunately, it is a big disappointment. The characterization is so simplified that the historic scenes are simply not believable. The characterization of the historic person is so black and white, it is child like. It is a simple vehicle for the movie makers to express their untempered hate towards Christianity.
If you watch the movie, also look out for the probability of some of the characters to meet again later, or for the probability of the final act of the heroine, simply unbelievable. Not nuanced enough. Too simplistic. Disappointing.
If you watch the movie, also look out for the probability of some of the characters to meet again later, or for the probability of the final act of the heroine, simply unbelievable. Not nuanced enough. Too simplistic. Disappointing.
Astoundingly bad.
Rogermex9 December 2012
Warning: Spoilers
I read the book by Henning Mankell and hoped for something better, because I very much admire his work. But this director hasn't a clue. The acting is atrocious. Not to mention that it's a very weird experience to watch Asians conversing in Swedish (not that there's anything wrong with that!).
The director seems to think that he heightens the thriller aspects by showing panoramas of Beijing. Huh? And in a supposed climactic scene, how are we to believe that the dedicated assassin comes charging at his target only to cudgel her with his blade in a scabbard, leaving minutes of dumb action so the policewoman has time to arrive and shoot him just before the unsheathed blade is to do its work? I doubt that's what was in the book, but if it was it was also as stupid as the heroine reaching behind her back, finding one last bullet and loading the conveniently placed gun while the other killer just stares (maybe has a cookie) and gives her time to shoot him.
This is a real stinker, to be avoided.
The director seems to think that he heightens the thriller aspects by showing panoramas of Beijing. Huh? And in a supposed climactic scene, how are we to believe that the dedicated assassin comes charging at his target only to cudgel her with his blade in a scabbard, leaving minutes of dumb action so the policewoman has time to arrive and shoot him just before the unsheathed blade is to do its work? I doubt that's what was in the book, but if it was it was also as stupid as the heroine reaching behind her back, finding one last bullet and loading the conveniently placed gun while the other killer just stares (maybe has a cookie) and gives her time to shoot him.
This is a real stinker, to be avoided.
Man from Beijing is an excellent movie about revenge!
Gendarmist7 December 2013
I have no idea what the other reviewers were doing while this movie was on but none seem to have watched it. I have come to expect great things form the movies that Michael Nyqvist is in. This one is no exception. It deals with an event that is so believable, I'd bet it is a depiction of an actual event.
The movie is a treatment of a single historical event that many of us did not get in school - the building of the Central Pacific Railway! Since I live near Truckee and Reno, it was really fun for me. The event took place over 150 years ago and is reaching its conclusion in this movie. Of course there are subtitles - it takes place on 3 continents! The casting is excellent, the costumes are accurate (or they look like it) and the plot is so amazingly complex yet simple. You can really sink your mind into it. Not one minute of boredom for me.
They give you enough of a hint at the beginning of the movie so you are not lost. I always hate it when a movie leaves you wondering what the heck this is about and when you find out, you have to see the movie a couple more times just to figure it out. No in this one - I suspected what happened at the beginning and really enjoyed how it slowly developed - FOR 3 HOURS! Great rainy day movie - although it is snowing here.
The movie is a treatment of a single historical event that many of us did not get in school - the building of the Central Pacific Railway! Since I live near Truckee and Reno, it was really fun for me. The event took place over 150 years ago and is reaching its conclusion in this movie. Of course there are subtitles - it takes place on 3 continents! The casting is excellent, the costumes are accurate (or they look like it) and the plot is so amazingly complex yet simple. You can really sink your mind into it. Not one minute of boredom for me.
They give you enough of a hint at the beginning of the movie so you are not lost. I always hate it when a movie leaves you wondering what the heck this is about and when you find out, you have to see the movie a couple more times just to figure it out. No in this one - I suspected what happened at the beginning and really enjoyed how it slowly developed - FOR 3 HOURS! Great rainy day movie - although it is snowing here.
Absurd, long, wooden acted and really really boring
abisio11 December 2016
Warning: Spoilers
The first absurd thing about this Swedish TV Movie is the English title; instead for The Chinese, they called The Man from Beijing; even when the Chinese part happens in Canton. The movie starts promising a lot of people (about 19) killed by a sword in a small Swedish town. All belonging to the same family. A female judge blood related with the family goes to the town to find out what happens. Well that takes about 10 minutes to develop but the movie stretches the plot for almost 90 minutes by filling with unnecessary scenes, long and empty dialog and some back flashes of something that happened 165 years ago. It is around the 90+ minutes mark that something interesting (but really absurdly handled) happens. End of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 then moves the action to Canton and things go for worse. Nothing makes sense and the motives are not even believable by the characters. The subplot about corruption has little to do with the rest of the movie. I do not know; perhaps Chinese got a different version more focused on more interesting matters; but this one is really boring and makes very little sense.
Even great actors like Michael Nyqvist (the original from the Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo can do anything on a character so underwritten that is almost non-existing).
In brief; unless you want to have a nap with the TV on avoid it.
Even great actors like Michael Nyqvist (the original from the Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo can do anything on a character so underwritten that is almost non-existing).
In brief; unless you want to have a nap with the TV on avoid it.
90 minutes would have been the way to go
Horst_In_Translation27 March 2017
Warning: Spoilers
"Der Chinese" or "The Chinese Man" or "The Chinese" or "The Man from Beijing" is a German television movie / mini-series that consists of two episodes of 90 minutes each. It is one of the more known works by director Peter Keglevic. The screenplay is by father and daughter Breinersdorfer, who adapted a Henning Mankell novel here. It is a small screen movie from 2011, so this one had its 5th anniversary last year. It is basically all about Suzanne von Borsody and I am not sure she is good enough to carry this film for such a massive runtime. Michael Nyqvist, Claudia Michelsen and Jimmy Taenaka have some screen time too and they may be the most known cast members here. I personally like Nyqvist, but sadly the material he was given here was just not good enough for him to truly make a difference. With the exception of the Asian actor in the center of it all, everybody just felt like a vehicle for von Borsody and the fact that she did not receive any awards attention at all says that they should have gone for another actress probably as the character was surely as baity as it gets.
This is the story of a female judge who finds her family murdered by a mysterious Asian male. It clearly is something personal in here. The entire film then is about her getting to the core of the problem and many flashbacks are included that lead us back many centuries and explain the background and motivation behind these murders. Now I think there are some good moments and this one here certainly gets better the longer it goes. The second 1.5 hours were certainly better than the first as honestly the only somewhat memorable aspect of the first 90 minutes is really the ending with the broken glass and it's a nice indicator of the rise in quality about to happen. But still overall, I was disappointed here. I think at 90-100 minutes with focus on the right scenes this could have been a really good outcome, maybe even a ****/***** with a better lead actress. But the path they too was just not right. It's overlong, shoddy in terms of focus and plot on quite a few occasions and there are characters in it that just add nothing to the film except duration, maybe necessary to reach the 3-hour mark (or come close to it as it's actually a couple minutes shorter). So yeah, while there are a handful strong moments, I must say that the negative outweighs the positive and as a consequence I give this film a thumbs-down. Not recommended. Or not enthusiastically at least. Unless you have an interest in a mix of Chinese/American history as this area is one where it somehow taught me something new really, even if there is also no elaboration in depth about the railway workers discrimination, apart from throwing in that it existed. Just one example of how the basics are good for this film, but the details and in-depth elaboration leave a lot to be desired. Watch something else instead.
This is the story of a female judge who finds her family murdered by a mysterious Asian male. It clearly is something personal in here. The entire film then is about her getting to the core of the problem and many flashbacks are included that lead us back many centuries and explain the background and motivation behind these murders. Now I think there are some good moments and this one here certainly gets better the longer it goes. The second 1.5 hours were certainly better than the first as honestly the only somewhat memorable aspect of the first 90 minutes is really the ending with the broken glass and it's a nice indicator of the rise in quality about to happen. But still overall, I was disappointed here. I think at 90-100 minutes with focus on the right scenes this could have been a really good outcome, maybe even a ****/***** with a better lead actress. But the path they too was just not right. It's overlong, shoddy in terms of focus and plot on quite a few occasions and there are characters in it that just add nothing to the film except duration, maybe necessary to reach the 3-hour mark (or come close to it as it's actually a couple minutes shorter). So yeah, while there are a handful strong moments, I must say that the negative outweighs the positive and as a consequence I give this film a thumbs-down. Not recommended. Or not enthusiastically at least. Unless you have an interest in a mix of Chinese/American history as this area is one where it somehow taught me something new really, even if there is also no elaboration in depth about the railway workers discrimination, apart from throwing in that it existed. Just one example of how the basics are good for this film, but the details and in-depth elaboration leave a lot to be desired. Watch something else instead.
What a stupid crap, both the novel and this movie adapted from it!
MovieIQTest9 December 2016
I never considered Henning Mankell a bad writer, but if this movie was adapted from his books, then he's not good enough to be called one of the best novelists from Scandinavian countries, not in the least. It's obvious that Henning Mankell were not familiar with anything about China, because this novel clearly showed that he didn't know jacksh@t about China and the Chinese people, everything he wrote was just by hearsay and imagination. Then even more unfortunately, this TV movie was adapted by an even moronic screenplay writer, and then further messed up by an even worse director.
The whole setting of this movie just looked funny, weird, outdated and contradictory. The era, the time sequences, the localities....what exactly was the time frame? Before 1980? Early 1980? Early 1990? Or early 2000? Because China had changed so rapidly, every decade after 1980 was totally different.But whatever you could come up during and after you have watched, simply felt contrite, stupid and exaggerated. The most ridiculous scenes were those to do with China and the Chinese, not just the Chinese in this movie speaking German. Almost everything in this movie related to China or the Chinese, just looked absurd and wrong. The shitty hotel, the crappy restaurant, the two brother and sister, and in that particular town were just laughable big jokes that just came out of the 19th century. The only thing I felt most a bit lucky during watching was about the novelist, the screenplay writer and the director, who at least didn't make the Chinese people still look like they were in 200 years ago's Chin Dynasty. Henning Mankell and the production team of this movie seemed to just follow Hollywood's stupidity and narrow mindness to ridicule everything about China, a permanent stubborn yet stupid stereotyped belief about China and the Chinese people. Even the bribery and the corruption of the brother looked silly and shallow, not even close.
The movie had wasted lot of production budget and manpower on the mass murder scenes from the very beginning, then spent lot of money to shoot some weird scenes of Mainland China, but since the whole scenario and plot simply looked stupid and shallow, you just couldn't buy the dramatic mess at all.
The whole setting of this movie just looked funny, weird, outdated and contradictory. The era, the time sequences, the localities....what exactly was the time frame? Before 1980? Early 1980? Early 1990? Or early 2000? Because China had changed so rapidly, every decade after 1980 was totally different.But whatever you could come up during and after you have watched, simply felt contrite, stupid and exaggerated. The most ridiculous scenes were those to do with China and the Chinese, not just the Chinese in this movie speaking German. Almost everything in this movie related to China or the Chinese, just looked absurd and wrong. The shitty hotel, the crappy restaurant, the two brother and sister, and in that particular town were just laughable big jokes that just came out of the 19th century. The only thing I felt most a bit lucky during watching was about the novelist, the screenplay writer and the director, who at least didn't make the Chinese people still look like they were in 200 years ago's Chin Dynasty. Henning Mankell and the production team of this movie seemed to just follow Hollywood's stupidity and narrow mindness to ridicule everything about China, a permanent stubborn yet stupid stereotyped belief about China and the Chinese people. Even the bribery and the corruption of the brother looked silly and shallow, not even close.
The movie had wasted lot of production budget and manpower on the mass murder scenes from the very beginning, then spent lot of money to shoot some weird scenes of Mainland China, but since the whole scenario and plot simply looked stupid and shallow, you just couldn't buy the dramatic mess at all.
A smörgåsbord disaster
ikanboy31 August 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Everybody speaks German, even the Chinese and Yanks, but they're supposed to be speaking Swedish. The plot is over the top and riddled with ludicrous plot holes. 19 people get slaughtered in one village, some 4-5 at a time and they arrest a guy playing music in one of the houses who has no blood on him, and who stuck around? The bad guy gets shot 2-3 times, yet manages to leave the country? Our heroine chases him to china....to do what exactly? When she finds him she runs. She gets her purse stolen but returned by a stranger who knows she is Swedish and speaks the language, and she doesn't catch on? Worst of all Michael Nykvist gets to do nothing but act as concerned husband. The Swedish cop insists on fingering an innocent despite mounting evidence to the contrary, until he commits suicide, then she admits he's innocent. Who vetted, or didn't this crap?
Wonderful Adaptation of a Mankell Masterpiece
yossarian10016 December 2016
If you enjoy reading Henning Mankell, you'll love this. The characters felt real and the plot unfolded just as I hoped it would. I also think the screenplay writer did an amazing job of bringing the screenplay down to a manageable size, otherwise this two part mini-series would have gone to more than six hours.
This adaptation captures the original feelings and focus of the novel, the actors did a good job, and the director had a firm grasp of the material and how to best present it.
I completely enjoyed watching this in one sitting, and the slightly more than 3 hours just seemed to fly by. I have no hesitation recommending this to you at all.
Now I'm looking forward to rereading the novel again, followed by another viewing of the film.
This adaptation captures the original feelings and focus of the novel, the actors did a good job, and the director had a firm grasp of the material and how to best present it.
I completely enjoyed watching this in one sitting, and the slightly more than 3 hours just seemed to fly by. I have no hesitation recommending this to you at all.
Now I'm looking forward to rereading the novel again, followed by another viewing of the film.
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