Executive Protection - The bomb is ticking

Movie
German title	Executive Protection - The bomb is ticking
Original title	Livvakterna
Country of production	Sweden
original language	Swedish
Publishing year	2001
length	108 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Unlike Nilsson
script	Not so Nilsson ; Joakim Hansson
production	Joakim Hansson ; Peter Possne
music	Bengt Nilsson
camera	Per-Arne Svensson
occupation
	Jakob Eklund : Johan Falk; Christoph M. Ohrt : Nikolaus Lehman; Samuel Fröler : Sven Persson; Lia Boysen : Jeanette Persson; Marie Richardson : Helén Andersson; Alexandra Rapaport : Pernilla; Örjan Landström : Ralf; Lennart Hjulström : Ola Sellberg;

Executive Protection - The bomb is ticking (Original title: Livvakterna ; Eng . "The Bodyguards") is a film by the Swedish director Anders Nilsson from 2001 and the second part of a trilogy that began with Zero Tolerance - Witnesses in Fear (1999) and with The Third Wave (2003) has been completed. The theme of the films is the work of a Swedish police team around Commissioner Johan Falk, played by Jakob Eklund .

The film ran under the title Protection - Mit tödlicher Sicherheit on ZDF and is available on DVD from Starmedia's distribution.

action

An international textile company headquartered in Sweden is threatened by protection rackets. In Estonia, the chairman of the board, Sven Persson, agrees to engage a "protection service" under the direction of a certain Nikolaus Lehmann against the blackmailers. The new plant security does its job thoroughly, but extremely brutally. The Estonian blackmailers are shot dead without further ado. The terrified Sven Persson wants to get out of business and withhold Lehmann the promised 20 percent of the annual profit.

Nikolaus Lehmann, however, cannot be disengaged. On the contrary, the former Stasi killer is now increasing his demands and demanding a stake in the company itself.

Commissioner Johan Falk intervenes in this situation. Falk takes unauthorized leave from his new desk job, to which he had been assigned since his last “misconduct”, and joins another, this time “good” security company. This, although well trained and equipped, is initially lost to the extremely brutal gang of Lehmann.

After Persson tried again to deceive Lehmann and relocated shares abroad, the situation came to a head again. Lehmann not only successfully intimidates Persson's business partner, but also breaks into Persson's house and kidnaps his wife. This reappears a little later with a "Colombian necklace". The closure of the chain is a time bomb. Persson is now ready to respond to all demands and meets with Lehmann's lawyer.

In the next passage of the film, you see Johan Falk losing control and violent against Lehmann's lawyer. After this rash act, Lehmann no longer wants to keep his promises and disappears with the documents signed by the company boss, without releasing Persson's wife from the chain. Falk seems to have been thrown completely off course by this course of events. At the last moment, however, he manages to find the gang's hiding place, a hut by a forest lake.

There is a showdown at the hut. The gang members are shot or arrested, only Nikolaus Lehmann manages to pull himself out of the affair unmolested. The bomb around Persson's wife's neck is defused at the last second.

In the end, Pernilla, an employee of the "good" security service, shoots Nikolaus Lehmann in front of his house.

background

Executive Protection - The bomb is ticking looks at different levels and forms of security and protection money companies. Including the official police, portrayed as disinterested and bureaucratic, as well as a dumb local neighborhood guard, five other “services” play a role. Everyone is busy for sure. The message from director Anders Nilsson becomes clear: Organized crime is on the rise, and protection against it is becoming more and more expensive. Sometimes the supposed protection even turns out to be more dangerous than the threat.

In Executive Protection , Anders Nilsson introduces his topic of a “third wave” of organized crime for the first time, which takes up even broader space in the final episode of the Johan Falk trilogy under the title The Third Wave . It is no longer risky drug and arms deals that are outlawed by society, but takeovers of companies under massive pressure, initially in Eastern and now also in Western Europe, through which organized crime is advancing more and more and the economy will increasingly control.

Reviews

Executive Protection - The bomb is ticking was well received by critics and crime fans, but the strengths were seen more in the preparation of the characters than in the action ingredients typical of the genre.