Beck - The Last Witness

The Last Witness is a solid crime drama and the 16th film in a series based on Sjöwall and Wahlöö's characters, whose adventures have been moved forward to the turn of the millennium. The realism is undiminished, but the film has no political message as in the writing duo's novels. Its main aim is quite simply to entertain.

Three women are found murdered, their faces disfigured by acid. The dead turn out to be Latvian prostitutes. While the policeman Martin Beck is struggling with his health, heart problems to be precise, his colleague Gunvald Larsson gets straight down to business and goes undercover in an attempt to find out why the girls had to be murdered. This takes him into a festering underworld that is not without its dangers. Slowly he discovers that the murders were not committed by some mad serial killer, but that there is more at stake, namely money.

While Gunvald Larsson thus struts about with gold chains and an unflattering moustache in the role of a pimp, the ailing Beck is closer to the whole affair than he has the slightest idea.