Bons baisers du tueur

For the amount of hate in these reviews, I just wanted to say it I thought it was interesting, entertaining & kept my interest. I agree not these actors best work, or a great film, but damn it's an okay thriller. It is what it is. Just let it do it's thing.

A quite good and cool movie, but.... Famke Jansen .... Whats had she Done with her face ???? She was so beautiful but now ... she is unrecognizable !!!

It is however fun to see my hometown Stockholm in the movie !

Serial killers will always be fodder for movies, good and bad. It's not worth quoting examples, anyone reading this has probably seen at least ten movies about serial killers. This is one more, based on original Scandinavian material that I've never seen, but I'd like to see it, and I'll try to find it. Honestly, I hope it's better than the movie I just saw...

The film is not bad. Don't get me wrong. It has a good base premise: murders that imitate famous works of art all over Europe, with the father of one of the victims desperately trying to catch the culprit. But it's not at all original, it does the same things that we're tired of seeing in established films, and it doesn't manage to go beyond the usual recipe to offer us something that makes it stand out. And there is a huge problem that partially ruins the film: we discover the identity of those who are killing people too soon and, from there, it is only worth watching the film to see how the police will hunt down their target.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a very solid and competent protagonist, able to commit himself and give the character the consistency and anguish that it demands. Undoubtedly, the actor's performance is a bonus in the film. Despite being heavily criticized, I think Famke Janssen wasn't that bad. She does have depressing moments and sometimes goes overboard, but she gives us a relatively satisfying job, and doesn't have many opportunities to really fail. Joachim Krol seems to be out of place and lost. Naomi Battrick is quite good, taking into account that she is not a frontline actress and has handled a character who demands a certain charisma and attitude; Ruairi O'Connor, honestly, cannot say he is happy, he erases himself even in scenes where he is more visible.

Technically, it's a regular film without great merits, but it doesn't fail too much either: the European settings and landscapes, always pleasant no matter how commonplace they may be, are joined by standard cinematography and ordinary work on the costumes. Some well-crafted effects and a lukewarm soundtrack make for a cohesive and functional, if forgettable, whole.

New York police detective Jacob Kanon (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his wife Valerie (Famke Janssen) arrive in Europe to retrieve their daughter's body after she was murdered by a serial killer. The killer poses the bodies to mimic great works of art. Jacob stays behind to track down the killer himself. Dessie Lombard (Cush Jumbo) is a reporter who starts writing about Jacob and the killer. Meanwhile, hulking Pieter Holl introduces himself to an American couple (Naomi Battrick, Ruairi O'Connor) traveling on an European train.

This is a rather bland murder procedural. It feels like a weak British TV killer procedural. There is a functional twist but there is nothing else after that. The tension is never raised and this just falls flat.

Just so much of it didn't gel. Morgan's acting for one. There are some unbelievably hammy scenes. Did he not learn to summon an authentic sense memory to trigger a convincing cry?

As a whole, the movie also could have been more cinematic. The scale seems small for being set in half-a-dozen countries. And that doesn't so the adaptation justice.

A lot of this comes across as a decent episode of a procedural show. That is the overall feel. The execution could have been so much better since the source material and story appear to have some interesting elements.