Man on the Roof

Man on the Roof is a Swedish crime thriller about a police officer who is killed while recovering in a Stockholm hospital. Martin Beck takes charge of the investigation, working alongside his colleague Einar Rönn. As they look into the dead man's past, they learn that he was widely known among his fellow officers for using excessive force and abusing his position, and that complaints against him had been kept quiet. The list of people who might have wanted him dead proves long, and the inquiry grows more complicated than the team expected. The case eventually leads to a heavily armed man who takes up a position on a rooftop in central Stockholm and opens fire on police officers in uniform.

Bo Widerberg directed and wrote the screenplay, with Per Berglund producing for SF Studios and Svenska Filminstitutet. It was Widerberg's fifth feature, arriving between Elvira Madigan in 1967 and All Things Fair in 1995, and it adapts the Martin Beck novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt plays Beck, with Sven Wollter, Thomas Hellberg, Håkan Serner, Ingvar Hirdwall and Birgitta Valberg among the credited cast of twenty-five.

The film runs 108 minutes and took about 1 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from 5,600 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 out of 10 from 83 votes, indicating a solid reputation with a relatively modest audience.