Dead Man Down

"Dead Man Down" is a surprisingly well crafted, character-driven thriller with a refreshingly unpredictable plot. However, to even summarize this film is to spoil it; going into it knowing as little as possible will, I imagine, make for a much more fruitful viewer experience. Therefore, I will keep my review short and unspecific.

The film stars the continuously underrated Colin Farrell and the international up-and-comer Noomi Rapace (2009's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "Prometheus"). "Dead Man Down" may seem like a high stakes crime thriller on the surface, but at its core is a character-driven drama about two outcasts of the world with a mutual driving force of self-destruction.

While some films in the same genre are akin to chugging cheap beer, "Dead Man Down" is like sipping on good wine. The film is tightly paced, but takes its time revealing key details, making for a much more savory experience. While not without its problems (a climax that comes a little too quickly and conveniently), overall you'll enjoy the journey these characters take and have a lot of fun guessing what will happen next along the way.

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. ***

It is really hard for me to rate this film because it is a mix of great and horrid bits. Colin Farrell's quiet yet intense act is matched by Naomi Rapace's hysterical overacting, the rather complex plot is messed up by cliché scenes and in the end, the moral seems to be that all plans that you care about are a lot easier to accomplish if there are no friends and romantic interests.

The thing with the film is that it has a lot going for it: great cast, good acting most of the time, a compelling story with just the right amount of details to make the plot a lot better than most Hollywood productions. Somewhere along the way it turns sour, the feeling someone gets when expecting to have fun at a party, only to have it all soiled by the significant's other discomfort. In the end the revenge feels failed, the romance doomed, the second chance just that: chance.

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.