The Last Contract (DVD)

The Last Contract (DVD) ... Michael Kitchen ... / DVD released 11 September, 2000 at Eureka Entertainment / Features of the DVD: PAL, Widescreen / Made in 1997 and directed by Kjell Sundvall, The Last Contract is based around the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme in 1986, who was shot while walking home from the cinema. Palmer's murderer or murderers were never caught and his mysterious assassination has been largely forgotten by the world. This speculative and fictional thriller suggests that Palme was the victim of a right-wing conspiracy, with even the Americans tacitly and indirectly involved, worried as they were about Palme's ambitions to turn Scandinavia into a nuclear-free zone. Mikael Persbrandt plays Roger Nyman, a Swedish police officer transferred to the Fraud Squad who discovers that an assassin responsible for a killing in Johannesburg is now contracted to kill Palme. However, his superiors take him off the case when he presents them with his findings and tries to follow up the case alone. Fearful, isolated, enraged and increasingly estranged from his family, he contrasts sharply with Michael Kitchen's suave but coolly lethal British contract killer. Though Palme's fate is foreknown, The Last Contract nonetheless succeeds in pulling you into its maelstrom of intrigue until virtually the final frame. --David Stubbs