A random night in and looking for inspiration of something to watch. Amazon were pushing this acquisition of theirs with some banner advertising and I decided to give it a go. It's an OK redux of "Se7en" that passed an evening, but nothing more.
When his daughter is killed whilst on honeymoon in London, Jacob Kanon (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a veteran detective from New York, pushes his way into the investigation. He discovers that their murder is one of a string across Europe's capital cities, with each pair of victims mutilated and staged like a classical artwork. The murderer is also sending a postcard to a local journalist ahead of each killing to announce their arrival. In Stockholm, Kanon manages to get to the reporter, Dessie Lombard (Cush Jumbo), before the murder takes place.
Adapted from the James Patterson novel, the film has a decent enough storyline to build around. You'll probably be ahead of who is committing the murders before the film reveals it, but that's OK as it's not really a whodunnit, more a why and will they be captured-unnit. Performances are OK. Morgan does well enough as the lead, nobody else is particularly asked to do that much heavy lifting. Famke Janssen has to do some of the investigation back in the States opposite Denis O'Hare, who shows up in a typical Denis O'Hare type role.
The trouble is, it's all been done before and better in other films, even TV series have the capacity now to be as gory and country hopping as this is. It just doesn't have any particular elements that elevate it beyond the passable stage. Also, as a European myself, it's got some pretty laughable ideas about how policing works over here, bear in mind we're in major capital cities here, not small towns. Kanon seems staggeringly unable to comprehend why the other officers won't let the father of one of the victims into the crime scenes and allow him to handle evidence. He then sticks a map of Europe to his bedroom wall and circles London and Madrid and draws a straight line between them, that'll tell him loads.
I didn't think it was as terrible as some other seem to have, but it's certain derivative and mundane and I doubt I'll remember it at all in a couple of weeks.
