Dead Man Down
★★
Dir: Niels Arden Oplev
(2012)
Niels Arden Oplev infiltrates the states with this double-edged revenge tale hampered by its own slow ham-fisted scripting and a stagnant performance by Colin Farrell. Reconnecting with Noomi Rapace whom he made a star out of after his version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the director seems affectionately drawn to the American mobster thriller but J.H Wyman's story trips up what could have a been a dark, tight, metropolitan chase film in favour of a plodding, murky piece of dirty work.
Farrell is Laslo, a right hand man for a major drug baron in New York City who is black mailed by his neighbour Beatrice (Rapace) to kill the man responsable for her disfigurement in a car accident. He's a little tied up with work however after his boss (Terence Howard) begins receiving bodies and pieces of a puzzle in the mail so he of course needs all hands on deck in getting to the bottom of it all. But as they get closer to the truth things start to get a little messy for poor bushy eye-browed Laslo.
The film twists and turns agilely enough when it counts but there are many left-overs to be picked through when all is said an done; A completely wasted performance by Isabelle Huppert as Beatirice's mother gives her little to do but bake cookies for Farrell's stone faced Laslo and bug him for her tupperware back. Rapace is the best thing here by miles playing Beatrice with that trade mark darkness and intensity which made Lisbeth Salander so ferocious in the first adaptations of Stieg Larsson's super hit novel series. Terence Howard is indeed watchable as Alphonse the drug lord but never quite hits the mark as a villain and the whole film boils down to a totally obvious yawning shootout.
Oplev's scant direction does gives the drama a nice spare lost feeling but the action sequences feel squashed in amongst a film which doesn't quite know what it thinks of its characters. The love story at the center is maybe the most interesting aspect but it sadly ends up as nothing more than two damaged souls finding purpose with each other in the midst of horrible revenge... something you can see coming after their first meeting across a windy balcony. A bit of a misfire on most counts.
