Dead Man Down
Dir: Niels Arden Oplev
2013
****
I feel I need to step in and defend Dead Man Down somewhat. It's received quite a lot of negativity but I'm really not sure why. Many of the reviews I've read from the American press critics attack the film by specifically mentioning that the director and three of the main characters are European. Some go as far as suggesting the European filmmakers should 'Go home'. The European critics however suggest that making the film in America is the problem. Both seem to agree that the film is ludicrous. Personally I really don't think where it was set really matters, it has very little to do with the story. I think people were expecting a A Girl With the Dragon Tattoo carbon copy because God forbid director Niels Arden Oplev try anything different. If he had made it in his native country Denmark then the American studios would have remade it anyway. It's not ludicrous either, at least no less so than the other 99.9% of films released that year. If you find Dead Man Down the most ludicrous and worst film of 2013 then you really didn't see that many films. It's hard to work out what audiences expect anymore, especially when Dead Man Down can boast a pretty decent performance from Colin Farrell - an actor I don't generally like, a strong supporting cast including Terrence Howard, Dominic Cooper, and F. Murray Abraham who are all on good form and a brilliantly complex performance from Noomi Rapace. Not to mention the quite beautifully composed direction. The big twist that happened fairly early on in the film came from no where, it was furiously intense and was one of the best single scenes of 2013. OK, so I'm not sure what Isabelle Huppert was doing here either and the car thing at the end was possibly not the best thing that could have happened but this film deserves way more credit than it has received.