Verso

excerpt, full review at my location - Xavier Ruiz's 2009 police thriller Verso arrives on DVD courtesy of Scanbox Entertainment in an effort to show that the 'peace capital' of Switzerland is anything but; where a hotbed of vice and sleaze act as the backdrop for revenge.

Verso is a film that simultaneously feels like it's trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Its confident visual presentation and attempts at intriguing character dynamics shown from both sides of the law - in a similar fashion to something like Michael Mann's Heat (1995) - are sabotaged by lazy performances, an uninspiring script, and an altogether tactless depiction of Switzerland's darker side. Had Ruiz's directing not been so heavy-handed and blatant, this could've been decent. Instead, we're left with something that's irksome and quite unremarkable.

Some girl is holding a gun, she talks about some guy who loves her.

Then we see some joint police/narcotics operation where one of those guys gets some chemical thrown in his face.

Then two cops pick up a guy who's released from jail. The guy, Victor, knows one of the cops, Alex. After a stop for some reason at the cop station, Victor goes to some seedy part of Geneva where he meets with some bad guys. He's offered a room in a whorehouse/club to stay, after he shows he's loyal to the main bad guy, Ceku, by beating up some hooker. He also gets a job delivering drugs.

Now we learn about Alex. He's applying for and being promised a job with narcotics. He's a bit impulsive and botches operations because of it. One of Ceku's whores is an informant. During the next operation a cop gets killed because the police and narcotics bosses can't agree on whether to intercept some drug deal. Alex is divorced, has a troubled teen daughter who does drugs and hangs out with the wrong crowd. And we learn that his wife is sleeping with Victor!

Turns out that Victor was a cop but at some point killed a girl so he ended up in jail. He was Alex's partner and childhood friend. Alex saves his life at some point. Alex had a brother who also hung out with Victor and Alex but he died young.

Near the end there are several twists in this family/friend drama as Alex tries to take down Ceku and resolve things with Victor once and for all. In flashbacks we learn how Victor killed the girl and he tells Alex some truths about the death of his brother.

Verso is a poor and ugly movie. The themes and violence are pretty unpleasant and so are the people--both the characters and the actors. There is plenty of story here but the director is completely clueless how to make a decent movie out of it. There was potential here for an interesting action drama thriller but this director manages to make out of all this a boring movie that in the last minutes goes nuts with the twists. But by then it was too late. And what does the girl in the intro have to do with anything? We never learn. Verso is a royally wasted opportunity.

A fairly stock standard contemporary police drama, set in Geneva. It starts out looking very cliché, just like a lot of others in the genre. The main character Decker is part of a Swiss SWAT team, he is something of a maverick figure, with an unhealthy respect for doing things according to the book, but he gets away with his transgressions because he is able to get results for things done, dangerous things. He is married to his job, in a sort of obsessive – compulsive way, to the extent that he has no home life. His first wife has left him, taking his angst ridden teenage daughter with her. The daughter dabbles in drugs and he has been absent from her for long periods of her development and important events. He even reacts to an emergency call from HQ like one of Pavlov's famous canines, right in the middle of her birthday. They call he responds. Sound familiar ? The only thing really missing here is a drinking problem.

He also fights constantly with the ex wife, he neglects his girlfriend, but he lives for his team. Then on routine escort duty he picks up a prisoner. The prisoner turns out to be his former partner Preiswerk, and it is obvious right from the outset there is plenty of history, bad feelings and some unfinished business between them. At this stage you might think of turning it off saying to yourself, been there, seen that, but then the move begins to refocus and reshape itself. A series of sepia stills is inter-cut into the action, with no explanation. Little pieces of the plot begin to shift away from the cliché ridden as the history of the main characters slowly takes shape and with some surprises. The new pieces begin to fall into place, and each new piece of the mystery revealed only makes for another layer of complexity. Many common plot devices are used, but they are then given a tweak and twist here as the film moves ever further away from being just a string of clichés, as it develops. When push comes to shove, Decker shows scant regard for authority, taking matters into his own hands, with results that aren't unexpected. We have seen it all before, probably a hundred times over, as the past is revealed, everything is explained and all the loose ends are tied up. It would be easy to dismiss the film at this stage, but it would be wrong to do so, for it isn't just the main characters who drive the action forward, minor character are also able to shift it too, from one side or the other. What we are left with at the end is nothing really new, but a slick product nonetheless. The film does have some nice touches though, not the least being a couple of haunting tracks, sung in English by the little known Better in Springtime.

Turned it off ! Actors boring, story totally boring. There was nothing interesting in this movie. 1/10 *