Imagine an icicle slowly forming off the nose of a severed head, and you get a sense of how unsettlingly gross and endlessly boring the cold-as-ice police procedural “The Snowman” is.
Meet Harry Hole (pronounced “HOE-leh”), the alcoholic Oslo police inspector at the center of 11 novels by the Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbø, with “The Snowman” (written in 2007) being his seventh. Hole (played by Michael Fassbender) has received a cryptic letter, written in block letters on blue stationery, warning him of something sinister — and signed with the image of a snowman.
Meanwhile, a younger detective, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), tries to convince Hole that a series of missing-persons cases, all involving 30ish married women, are connected. She thinks the cases are tied to a fertility doctor, Idar Vetlesen (David Dencik), whose clinic also performs abortions — and that the doctor is also linked to a famous industrialist, Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons), who’s spearheading Oslo’s bid to land the WinterSports World Cup (which isn’t anything like the Winter Olympics, and Universal Pictures’ lawyers surely will run up many billable hours making that point if anyone ever challenges it).
What all this has to do with a 9-year-old cold case in Bergen, where another vodka-swilling detective (played by a barely recognizable Val Kilmer) was looking into some bizarre murders, isn’t clear. But Hole’s attempt to unravel the mystery is interrupted by personal problems, involving his ex-girlfriend Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her rebellious teen son, Oleg (Michael Yates), who’s not getting along with Rakel’s new boyfriend, a plastic surgeon, Mathias (Jonas Karlsson).
Following Hole as he juggles the many missing-persons cases, the Bergen cold case, his personal problems and his concern that Bratt has a whole different agenda undoubtedly makes for a riveting read in book form, where you can flip back a few pages or chapters if you missed something. As a movie narrative, though, it’s a dimwitted mess that three screenwriters — Peter Straughan (“Wolf Hall”), Hossein Amini (“Drive”) and Søren Sveistrup (who created the original Danish version of “The Killing”) — couldn’t corral into something exciting.
Instead, Swedish director Tomas Alfredson (“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”) throws up a fishmonger’s basket of red herrings and tangents. Perhaps the oddest is the casting of Chloë Sevigny as twins, one of whom is the first headless character the movie shows us. Alfredson delights in showing ways people’s noggins become detached from their bodies, but the queasy unsettling feeling those scenes produce mostly just serves to keep the viewer from falling asleep.
There’s a talented international cast, led by Fassbender and Ferguson, who labor mightily to pump some heat into the chilly Norwegian vistas. But the troubled but tough Harry Hole, at least in this telling, is as hard to warm up to as a snowman.
* 1/2<br>The Snowman<br>A troubled Oslo police inspector tries to unravel a strange case in this tedious adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s crime novels.<br>Where • Theaters everywhere.<br>When • Opens Friday, Oct. 20.<br>Rated • R for grisly images, violence, some language, sexuality and brief nudity.<br>Running time • 119 minutes.