Dead Man Down

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. ***

"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.

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.

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 a surprise and an exceptionally rewarding viewing experience. This is an intelligent thriller packed with action that takes its time to unfold and finally wanders off into the sunset leaving the viewer invigorated and satisfied, but ready for another bout.

Victor (Colin Farrell) is a player in in gangland kingpin Alphonse's (Terrence Howard) empire and, though he gives the appearance of being Alphonse's right-hand man, his intentions towards the crime lord are decidedly darker. Meanwhile, the girl in the apartment opposite, Beatrice (Noomi Rapace), watches him dispatch an adversary and blackmails him into dishing out a generous serving of retribution that she herself is unable (or unwilling) to administer.

Neils Arden Oplev (the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and currently shooting Stephen King's Under the Dome) peels back layer after layer to reveal ever-rawer characters and emotions in Dead Man Down. It isn't just about unfolding the story, though he does so beautifully, it is more about filling out the characters carefully so that we understand what makes them tick. No, what makes them angry.

There are some severely damaged characters on display here but their emotions, their actions, come across as not just understandable but entirely justified. Forget petty crooks with violent whims, Victor and Beatrice have given serious thought to their revenge but that doesn't make them shallow or irredeemable.

While Victor bubbles along in a coldly, organized manner, Beatrice rages under her skin. On the surface she is the cool cat but the confusion, the maelstrom of rage, bitterness and loss, swirls within her so that she is potentially dangerous to herself and Victor. It is tempting to use the old cliché of both Farrell and Rapace 'never being better' but it isn't true in her case; she is frequently this good, even if the films don't always match her talent. In Farrell's case, he has so many under-performing films (London Boulevard, Tigerland) and the odd turkey (Total Recall) on his CV that it is easy to forget that he is generally on very fine form. Don't believe me? Look again at Phone Booth, In Bruges…

Howard has a reputation in the industry of being 'difficult' (note the recasting of Colonel Rhodes in the Iron Man sequels) but his body of work is extraordinary and the intensity of his performance in Dead Man Down makes it blindingly obvious why he's a good bet on screen. There's no Nicolas Cage-type ranting, just a considered, quiet violence to his Alphonse.

Dominic Cooper slips along in Dead Man Down, not at all unremarkable, but just another fine actor and a superbly cast film. As Darcy, another of Alphonse's mob and friend of the traitorous Victor, he comes across as a good(ish) guy who's unfortunate to be caught up in entirely the wrong job in the wrong place at the wrong time. He doesn't steal scenes here but he fills them out, he completes them, knowing his place in the hierarchy of the mob and his billing in the film.

Oplev has crafted a very fine thriller indeed. The drama excites, the explosions scorch the skin but what makes Dead Man Down stand above so many others in the genre (I'm talking to you, Welcome to the Punch) is not the ramped up action but the stillness and the time and care he takes over his characters and the setting of the atmosphere. He allows us time to enjoy the clinking of ice-cubes in glasses as Victor and Beatrice consider each other and, strangely for a director of an action flick, allows the dialogue to do the talking rather than the gunshots and the car chases.

Dead Man Down is at times gentle but always thrilling and the pauses in the action don't ever detract from the pace. Conversely, they make it more intense and a film that truly deserves to register at the box office in spite of the big-buck, megastar vehicles of Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness. I fear it will be another 'underperforming' film on Farrell's CV, but don't for a minute confuse that with being a flop. The dead man might be down but he definitely isn't out.

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