crimson66

As a fan of Mads Mikkelsen for quite some time, I was very interested in seeing this film. He was excellent as was Shia LaBeouf. Mads truly dedicates himself to every character he plays. From 'Tonny' in the Pusher trilogy, the villain in Casino Royale, or his Oscar worthy performance in Jagten (The Hunt). Jagten is quietly the best film of 2013. LaBeouf has come a long way from his less than humble beginnings. He impressed me however with his role in Lawless, I feel he played that character perfectly and left nothing behind. Shia was quite dedicated to the title role in this film, Charlie Countryman, and did not settle for playing the common generic Channing Tatum leading mean. He was able to show nice range and seemed to even improvise in some scenes. He clearly has a tragic comedic presence to him which he uses well. The dark dramatic tone of the film is complemented well by it with its subtle use of comedic undertones.

I generally dislike American actors who attempt to portray foreign accents and foreign characters, such was the case here with Evan Rachel Wood. Overall she did a decent job though she seemed to focus more on her accent and her appearance as a Romanian rather than her character. The soundtrack was quite good and complemented film perfectly, especially the track during the outstanding chase scene towards the end. The film is certainly not a genre film by any means, and this is a good thing. This is most likely why the not so bright people didn't really understand or appreciate it, as they probably were expecting Transformers 15. Sad truth is that majority of Americans are quite dumb and lack intellect, they need to have things explained in a way so that they don't have to think or understand anything beyond a medial level.

Charlie Countryman at its heart is a dark dramatic love story with comedic undertones, which if were the opposite then would not have worked. I would not call this film a comedy, nor is it an 'action movie'. The director did quite a good job maintaining the tone of the film throughout, never falling flat or losing focus. Overall has a nice supporting cast which even though some characters were in few scenes, were used quite well regardless. Vincent D'Onofrio was only in it very briefly along with Melissa Leo, though Leo's character was pivotal in her few scenes towards the maturation of Shia's character arc. Overall I'd say this is an excellent film and worthy of multiple viewings. Ultimately it transcends any labels or any single genre, thus the mindless drone population will not care for it.

8/10

I have to say this 'remake' was incredibly disappointing. well to say that i was expecting much is not quite accurate, in fact, i was expecting not very much. however, what i saw with this film was utter mediocrity by this director with poorly directed scenes which if properly produced would not have made the final cut. overall it's an amateur production of this cult film remake. around the halfway point it did in fact start to pick up its pace and there were some memorable scenes. overall though i have to say most scenes were unmemorable. the cliché British techno/house score did not help matters. a big plus was seeing the actor who portrays Milo in this film, as he starred in 2 of the original pusher films by refn. he actually made the film enjoyable to watch at times by his performance. ultimately, Refn had far less of a budget to make his pusher film compared to the budget Luis Prieto had to work with. So to create such a lackluster effort all around by Prieto and the crew is quite a disappointment. Refn had stated early on he did not want to interfere with this remake, though I think he should have considering it does reflect on him somewhat, albeit indirectly.

5.5/10