Who payed the critics

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I watched this film on TV eleven years after it was made, with absolutely no background knowledge of the book or the stars. I live on the other side of the world.I found it very interesting - the office politics, and the portrayal of a couple of professionals with young children, trying to balance all the demands of modern life. These things were more interesting to me, than the plot about the death of the public figure and the matter of who was responsible for her death and the following attacks. The performances were very good, and I thought Helena Bergstrom's performance was excellent. I've read in other 'reviews' on IMDb that the author of the book is a similar person -( journalist with a leading newspaper,) to the role that she played - Annika. No doubt this is why the realistic portrayal of the daily challenges at the office was so interesting to me. I was not bothered that the author may have written about herself, not knowing about that at the time of watching the film. Therefore, I was free to appreciate the film for what it is - with no background baggage. And all the hype mentioned which took place at the time of release, - well - I missed it! I don't understand how people found it boring - maybe they don't enjoy dialog and observing human nature.

Can a movie be so awful it's actually physically harmful to watch? "Sprängaren" comes close. I had never watched any of Colin Nutley's pictures before this one, and I can safely say that I will never deliberately watch another one. This is so bad it should be used as a user manual for how not to make a movie. I honestly can't think of a single thing in this tedious waste of film that doesn't suck to high heavens. The story, which isn't that interesting in the first place, unravels at the pace of a dead man running a marathon. The direction is standard fresh-out-of-film-school, "hey-look-I-just-found-a-camera-in-the-garbage-can" stuff, stunning in its ineptitude and seemingly aggressive refusal to be interesting. The acting is so good it almost rivals the works of Ben Affleck in terms of charisma and enthusiasm. To be honest, for the first half hour I could've sworn I was watching a satirical comedy about zombie journalists. As for Helena Bergström, she deserves a special mention because it really boggles my mind how she EVER became as famous (even by Swedish standards) as she is now. She has no acting talent whatsoever and she has a face like the rear end of an infected hamster. Sorry Helena, but it's true and you know it, no matter what your husband says.Moving on to smaller, yet crucial aspects of the film, the sound, musical score, and lightning is so sickeningly off in almost every single scene that it hurts to watch. The music, for the most part, has nothing to do with what's going on on-screen, the dialogue is muffled and there is a very lazy (and ineffective) use of natural lightning throughout. To be honest, only one scene didn't make me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon, and it was a five-second shot of some trees. I guess this is a major achievement for someone like Nutley.The stunning amount of reviewers here who gave the film more than 3/10 makes me want to commit acts of terrorism myself. How can you find anything about this movie good??Send this film to Guantanamo where it belongs... as a torture device.

Colin Nutley is known for regarding Swedes in an English way, although he makes us recognize ourselves very well. He has always been fair to us. In "Sprängaren" he is telling a story about life on a Swedish evening paper. The plot, which begins with the bombing of the new imaginary Stockholm Olympic Stadium, isn't really interesting however. The values in this movie are to be find in the relations between the reporters.Helena Bergström is here making her best part for quite long. According to Swedish journalists, this is how life is at an editorial staff of this kind. The problem is the thriller element. Mr. Nutley makes the final solution a little too easy and one asks oneself, was it really necessary to make a thriller at all, when you are making a movie about this kind of newspaper people?

Well, it's been a long time since I've seen a movie as boring as this one. It's a thriller but there are no thrills. There's no pace either, the film moves as slowly as a snail, and it is more a drama about a newspaper than a thriller about a murderer. I've read Liza Marklund's novel, upon which this movie is based, and I quite liked it, but it is obvious that it doesn't work as a movie. At least not when Colin Nutley's at the helm. I've never wanted to sleep at the cinema before, but this time I actually longed to close my eyes and take a nap (I didn't, though). I recommend this film if you're an insomniac in need of a cure... I mean, it's not even bad enough to be funny. (3/10)