Dead Man Down

The basic plot, as described, doesn't do justice to the film itself, which is almost a classically constructed noir film of vengeance, and very tense one at that. First, the two leads. Colin Farrell has been derided as just a pretty mug, but he's done some fine acting (much of it in bad films, like the remake of "Fright Night"), and here is convincing and compelling as a man driven by revenge. He unexpectedly meets his counterpart in a woman, who also wants revenge for wrongs done to her.

Which brings me to Naomi Rapace. I've only seen her in the pretty average "Sherlock Holmes," which gave no one a chance to shine. In this film she played a very damaged woman, which is often one of the easiest things to portray, yet she did a very powerful job of showing the character's change from harpy bent on destruction back to a woman able to empathize with the suffering of others.

Overall, a surprising and worthy film, with an ending one doesn't see coming. Well worth your time.

Dead Man Down is actually not a good thriller, but it is a great thriller. Some things may not be entirely believable, but then again we are often told to suspend our disbelief in these kind of movies, which I did. This thriller is a slow-burn thriller that focuses less on the action, but more on the characters and the retribution.

Oplev's film has a distinctive European feel to it and that is how I like my thrillers. But this film is about a man named Victor who is the right-hand man of a crime lord named Alphonse and has a very mysterious past. But he is seduced by a car crash victim named Beatrice, who is a mysterious woman herself. But together, they plot to bring Alphonse to justice.

For a film such as this, it has a pretty talented cast. Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace share such intimate chemistry with each other. It's a shame Farrell is not a high box-office draw these days because he got so much talent. Terrence Howard does a very good job, and it's nice to see him shine in a villainous role for once. There is a nice cameo by F. Murray Abraham as well and I like it because we definitely don't see much of him anymore.

Overall, Dead Man Down is much better than what people are making it out to be. It's a slow-burn thriller, not an action shoot-em-up as apparently people were expecting. There are going to be logic issues, but I'm very good at suspending my disbelief, because I'm watching a fictional movie. But this is a well-acted thriller and one of the better films of 2013. I rate this film 9/10.

Victor (Colin Farrell) is gangster thug working for Alphonse (Terrence Howard). Somebody is trying play with Alphonse's head by sending him cryptic messages. Beatrice (Noomi Rapace) is Victor's neighbor. She has been scarred in the face by a drunk driver. When she filmed him killing somebody, she uses it to blackmail him to kill the man who caused her pain. Only she's not the only one with a secret pain.

The acting power in this film is quite impressive. This is directed by Niels Arden Oplev (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). He certainly has the skills to make a movie. At the start, it looked like just another crime action thriller. Then it added a darker brooding character study. It feels uneven. There are a couple things I find questionable, and the ending feels stuck on from another big action Michael Bay movie. Overall it's still a good effort. If only Niels could stick to one genre or the other, this odd mix would flow more easily.

Beautiful photography (amazing background blur, lighting & bokeh) and fantastic production design.

The only things letting down this film are the pace (slow at times), and the lack of character development.

Very good performances from Raapace and Farrell, good chemistry and I thought Raapace was very beautiful as Beatrice. The way the kids treated her was very disturbing and I felt an accurate indictment of modern society and its emphasis on the superficial. The main themes of 'Family' & 'Love' were very well portrayed. Overall I would give this film 7.5/10, a gritty, violent depiction of Urban Decay and the injustice of the supposedly equal legal system.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Victor (Colin Farrell) is a Hungarian immigrant, who arrived in the US hoping to raise a family and hold down an honest job. But these simple dreams were shattered when crime lord Alphonse (Terrence Howard) and his goons took over the apartment block he was living in, and his family were killed. He has now infiltrated Alphonse's gang, and is systematically annihilating every one of them until he reaches the main man himself. But Victor crosses paths with Beatrice (Noomi Rapace) a beautiful woman whose life has been ruined after she was left with a hideous facial scar by a drunk driver, who tries to blackmail him in to helping her get her own revenge.

It may have reached the stage now where audiences are basically forced in to being a little less demanding and must accept if a plot isn't entirely original or has been done before, as long as it's maybe told in a different sort of way or explored from different angles. Which seems to be the case in hand with this offering from the director of the original The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. As multi-layered as a BLT sandwich, Dead Man Down compounds the action with a cacophony of sub- plots and plot angles that means it never plays out like a traditional revenge thriller, even if the basic plot line is exactly the same.

Shot in a drained background colour, it keeps the feel of a bleak, dreary style that feels like the norm these days. Playing a foreign character whose English isn't so good, Farrell also has to carry the film without much dialogue, but has developed a natural presence by now that gives him enough gravitas to do so. The story and the performances keep you hooked, even if at times they all feel a bit over-whelming and you struggle to take it all in.

While not quite the sum of it's parts that it could have been, Dead Man Down is still a very impressive film, in both a technical and practical sense, that is one of the finer points of Farrell's recent resume. ***