Based on the novel by the popular Norwegian novelist Jo Nesbö, the strange and bizarre Nordic noir thriller was filmed by the Italian-American filmmaker Francesco Carrozzini in an Italian-British co-production and in that typically gloomy, gray Nordic color palette. And he set the plot somewhere in the Norwegian wolf-catch, in the Freudian countryside in the north of the country, although it is unclear to the viewer where it is happening and what kind of characters they are who speak English and have British names, and the environment they are in is obviously not Great Britain. And not only is it all confusing and strange, but “The Hanging Sun” is an incredibly boring and monotonous movie that takes place in a bizarre town in the far north.
And that, as the title of the film itself suggests, right at the height of the Nordic summer when the sun never sets, which is why the phenomenon is called the midnight sun, just as Nesbö titled one of his lesser-known novels. John (the Italian Alessandro Borghi whom we remember from the movie and series “Suburra”) arrives in that desolate place, a walking cliché, that is, one of those mysterious, silent types from the dark past about whom nothing is known. Well, we know from the beginning that he is no longer on good terms with his family and his father, a powerful boss of the criminal underworld (Peter Mullan), and we will learn part of his backstory through flashbacks.
An equally tortured soul is Lea (Jessica Brown Findaly), a resident of that desolate place whose violent husband has just disappeared and she is left alone with her son Caleb. So even though John’s brother and a team of thugs are looking for that mysterious stranger for whom we don’t understand why he went to that wolf den, Lea will protect him, and as is the order in these kinds of movies, two lonely and unhappy people will somehow connect . Especially since Caleb will also find a kind of father figure in John, but none of that will be possible before that mysterious guy with a soccer player and a long beard with a penetrating and wistful look solves his family problems. I expected more from this ultimately boring, rather uninteresting thriller.