Starring: Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard
After a car accident has left her permanently disfigured,
Beatrice (Rapace) begins to talk to Victor (Farrell) a man from the apartment
building across from her. After a short time, Beatrice reveals that she
witnessed Victor (a member of a gang) murder someone in his apartment and uses
this as leverage to get Victor to exact her plot of vengeance. Meanwhile,
Victor’s gang associates are getting killed off and no-one knows who’s
responsible.
Having made his name internationally directing the initial
three film adaptations of Stieg Larrson’s Millenium Trilogy, Niels Arden Oplev
moves his thriller style from Scandinavia to the US, keeping in tow actress
Noomi Rapace (who played Lisbeth Salander in the Millennium films). The film
also carries the tag of WWE Films; the wrestling company’s continuous use to
getting in the film-market, usually pushing its wrestlers into lead roles in
projects which haven’t often been met with critical acclaim, often being
decried as brain-dead cookie-cutter action films. Despite this disconcerting
element, Dead Man Down is actually a fairly intelligent and engaging thriller
that owes a fair amount to the works of Martin Scorsese alongside having a
distinctly European sensibility. This latter element is highlighted by the two
leads; Irish Colin Farrell playing a Hungarian and Swede Noomi Rapace playing a
French woman, both with Americanised accents, owing to naturalisation. Both
actors perform well and the film is well-shot (if a little murky), but the plot
is over-complicated (essentially, they’ve taken two plots that could’ve been
used for two movies and smashed them together) and it’s easy to get lost as the
film loses focus; also, whilst being ostracised as a “monster” due to her
disfiguring, Rapace’s Beatrice is hardly horrific looking (in fact, many people
would probably still want to look half as attractive). The film’s not too bad,
but it probably should’ve focused on one story rather than two, and had a more
satisfying conclusion.
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