Bloody Angels

No, it's not Roger Corman's “lost” sequel to The Wild Angels, though I'll wager I'm not the only one who wondered going in if James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff had something to do with this. No such luck though -- Bloody Angels lacks both Peter Fonda and motorcycles and instead gives us Norway's equivalent of white trash and Reidar Sorensen as Nicholas Ramm, an Oslo detective doggedly pursuing a child murderer in the Norwegian backwater of Hotten. Bloody Angels opens with a surreal rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” as the enigmatic Ramm arrives on the scene of a second murder in a ludicrously out-of-place, fire-engine-red roadster. It's meant to signal Ramm's singular vision and capabilities, no doubt, but it also serves as the first of many self-imposed stylistic and literal blockades set between the detective and the townspeople. The dead man in the river is thought by the villagers to have been involved in the killing of Katarina Munch, a 10-year-old Down syndrome child whose brutally mutilated body was found days before. Corpse No. 2's brother, Finken Hartmann (Conradi), is still at large, though Ramm quickly tracks him down, with the help of an old friend from the police academy who now serves as Hotten's chief of police. No one admits anything to the stoic Ramm, who refuses to allow the locals to pre-judge the Hartmann brothers (and by extension the entire Hartmann family), insisting that no one can be declared truly guilty until all the facts are in. The problem with this, however, is that Ramm isn't in cosmopolitan Oslo anymore; Hotten is the archetypal creepy backwoods township, and Ramm's presence is barely tolerated, and eventually outright dismissed. Bloody Angels moves with the cool and leaden momentum of a glacier, which fits the tone of the film just right but makes for an protracted running time that seems to be at least 20 minutes too long. Even after Ramm befriends the Hartmanns' youngest son Niklas (Skjegstad) and tries to make some sort of difference in the emotionally battered boy's life, the film seems to lack any sort of forward motion at all. Which, I suspect, is Julsrud's point, at least in part. Bloody Angels is shot in a singularly dreary palette of blues and snowy grays, and while the dour pacing and tone rank right up there with watching water freeze in terms of gutpunching suspense, by the time the final, grisly revelation is at hand you're hard-pressed not to sweat, if only a little bit. If anything, Julsrud's film recalls Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia, which was likewise obtuse in tone and shot through with surreal, eerie touches. It's not the most gripping police procedural I've ever seen, but Bloody Angels still manages to unnerve. Like the frozen Northern forests it's set in, the film has a stark, chilling beauty.