THE HUNTERS is a crime thriller about a Swedish cop who returns to his home town to discover a hotbed of crime and deceit as he pursues a reindeer poaching gang. This stars WALLANDER actor Rolf Lassgard and it does feel very much like a Henning Mankell story, by which I mean it's a classic slice of Scandi-crime dripping with atmosphere and suspense.

The story that plays out is very nearly as icy as the chilly background in which the tale takes place. Certainly it's an exploration of the dark side of the human soul, with a typical police procedural in the first half giving way to something much more sinister and murderous in the second. Rolf Lassgard and Lennart Jahkel are excellent in the lead roles as a pair of brothers driven apart by living at opposite ends of the moral spectrum.

The only reason I'm not a massive fan of this genre is that I don't like the way that the criminals are never made to really pay for their crimes, due to the limitations of the justice system (which are all too apparent here). I prefer the sort of film where the protagonist goes outside of the law in order to bring the bad guys some true justice. Still, THE HUNTERS trades crowd-pleasing vengeance for chilly realism, offering no easy answers or a perfect ending; it's as dark and quietly devastating as it gets.