BBC TV 4 film Saturday 15th October 2016 one off Danish Film Department
Q. The Keeper of Lost causes based on a book and which been followed by two other
films although these are not to be shown I watched but I cannot say it was an enjoyable
experience. Following an incident when one of a team of three detectives is
murdered and a second finds himself paralysed, the third who was also shot but survives
to physically recover is relegated to permanently close the accumulation of
cold cases and is appointed an enthusiastically Muslim with a taste for loud
contemporary music. His assistant selects the first batch of cases with a
parade of photographs and which includes one, Carl, the reluctant boss knows something
about the case of a young woman politician who is believed to have committed
suicide disappearing from a ferry leaving her brother with what first appears
to be severe learning difficulties from head injuries in a car accident which
killed their parents.
The unravelling of what
actually happened is thorough and clever and early on we learn that the young
woman was in fact kidnapped and is being kept in a decompression chamber which
limits the confined area and also enables the perpetrator to changing levels of
physical unpleasantness. There is a credible method for of food and water
dealing with sanitation and the provision of food and water but it stretches credulity
that the woman is able to survive this limited environment for year upon year.
As this is a one off TV
showing and the film is not on general release I am not inhibited about
revealing the story which emerges. A boy
is travelling with his younger sister at the back of a family car and is
overtaken by a second car in which a young girl looks out and they interact,
but she places hands over the eyes of her father who is driving in front of her
and this causes the accident in which everyone is killed except the boy who is
badly affected, the girl and her brother. The boy is understandably affected by
what happened although the girl given her subsequently life appears less so.
The boy is prone to violent outbursts is placed in a children’s home where he
has one friend who he can exercise influence.
The detectives establish that
the young women have attend a conference and are able to acquire photographs
taken at the event and follow up the men with her. One of these turns out to be
the friend of the boy at the school, but it is discovered that he also has
appeared to have disappeared in a boating accident and later from the use of CCTV
they are able get confirmation that the man at the conference is the surviving
boy and not the friend. As the detectives begin to track down the culprit,
still not knowing if the young woman is alive they are warned and then stripped
of their authority pending disciplinary enquiries. To add tension, the perpetrator
reveals himself and therefore why and warns the young women that the time is
approaching when he uses to tank for her to give her an excruciating painful death.
Fortunately, as tension mounts
and when it looks that have failed to rescue the woman before she is killed he
sees something which suggests she is being held in a situation where a petrol powered
generator is being use. The main detective is nearly killed while the assistant
although shot is able to disabled and brutally kill the assailant. The begin to
recover in an appropriate decompression chamber in hospital with uncertainty
about her eventual state. It was the persistence of the assistant befriending
the brother, who appears more traumatised than physically damaged who establishes
that the photograph is not that of the man believed to have disappeared but the
boy at the home and circumstances in which he went into care.
The detective is rewarded with
a medal and a return to his previous duties but he elects to continue with the
work, with his assistant and a full time Secretarial assistant/PA. As I saw I
thought the film unpleasant and the story full of questions. 6 out of 10 no more.
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