Dead Man Down Review

Bleak lives searching for a way to fill the hole that has been left in them.

What They Say:
“Dead Man Down” is an action thriller that stars Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace as two strangers whose mutual desire for revenge draws them together and triggers an escalating trail of mayhem. The film, which also stars Academy Award-nominee Terrence Howard and Dominic Cooper, marks the American theatrical debut of director Niels Arden Oplev (the original “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”).

The Review:
Sometimes a film comes together just because of the names involved and even if the trailers are underwhelming, or little promoted in general, you just want to check it out for yourself to see what was put together. With Dead Man Down, we get the solid casting of someone I’ve generally always liked in Colin Farrell and the more recent for me Noomi Rapace, who I’ve only seen in Prometheus. The pair, along with a decent cast of supporting actors including Terence Howard, come together for the American film directorial debut of Niels Arden Oplev, who gained a good bit of fame over the years for directing original European work The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. How could you not want to see what this group could produce?

The film is one that does work in some layers as it reveals itself so that if you don’t see the trailers or read all the promotional material (which is what I did), you can enjoy seeing it unfold. The premise is straightforward in a way as we get introduced to the kind of varied gangster criminal material here with a few levels worth of players, though the focus is kept relatively close to the lower levels of the empire. With several competing groups under a general umbrella, we’re introduced to Alphonse, a solid kingpin within it who has rising stakes but also others that are inching to get closer to taking him out, which has lead to a few months worth of mysterious pieces of pictures, messages and other ways of messing with him from some mysterious opponent. Alphonse is getting more and more paranoid about it, especially as some of his underlings start getting taken out in more brazen and obvious ways, such as the arrival of Paul in a freezer in a place that should have been secure.

One of his up and coming members in his gang is Victor, who saves his life early on here in the film and has been working for Alphonse for over a year now, alongside a relative friend named Darcy who joined around the same time. The two are rising stars in their own way, but whereas Victor is quiet and dangerous, Darcy is angling for more promotions and is playing more of a detective role to figure out how his boss is being threatened so that he can earn some more power. We get to see some of how the gangs operate, the tightness of the family of them overall and the general tone of the film early on which keeps it pretty tight and tense in a way that’s not overblown or too dramatic. It does build on itself over time and can feel like a little much here and there since it’s an almost all dark or overcast piece, but it sets the atmosphere very well.

What changes the course of things is the arrival of someone new in Victor’s life, a woman that he sees across the way in his apartment building named Beatrice. She’s a curious types with a foreign nature about her who lives with her mother that speaks little English. Victor is curious about her, but it’s because he’s wondering whether she saw him commit a murder in his own apartment and whether he has to deal with her or not. Which is tough, because he learns of her own pain and suffering as she was scarred along the face a year ago in a car accident with a drunk driver. What she wants, through a little bit of very awkward, stilted and yet natural series of exchanges is to have Victor kill the man that did this to her since he got off with a few months through the system, a slap on the wrist compared to what she had to deal with for the past year. Her life is not easy as we see how she can’t work well as a beautician anymore, people stare at her and the kids torment her as a monster.

While Victor does get dragged into her web, it’s more just a subplot for the film than an equal half to what Victor is doing. She’s drawn more into his world as we see the quest for revenge that he’s on and how he’s using people in his own somewhat controlled way. Not everything for his plans go right, Beatrice makes her own impact on them along the way as well, but there’s an old school familial feeling to all of it as we learn more about Victor and his motivations. Niels Arden Oplev brings in a lot of his European feeling to this where even though it takes place in New York City, there’s little of “traditional” Hollywood style New York to it. Albanians, Hungarians, French and so forth populates it. It’s not seedy throughout, but it has its dark moments and locales to deal with. It’s pretty refreshing in its own way because it doesn’t go for all the usual structural and architecture shots to really bind you to the city, instead keeping it down and dirty with a realism and grit that’s not overproduced.

Dead Man Down is the kind of film where the less you know, the better off you are since there are some decent reveals along the way. The cast is one that does a solid job throughout as it works with characters that are damaged in their own ways when it comes to the leads. Farrell keeps it mostly grim, calm and collected throughout which is what’s required of the character based on the situation he’s in. Rapace has a more difficult role since she’s dealing with the scars inside and out and she brings a good bit of accent to all of it which gives her character an even more distinct feeling, especially when she’s speaking English to her mother and her mother throws everything back in a mix of French and English with subtitles. There’s a distinct European feeling to it in which where you come from plays a significant enough role in it all and knowing the truth about your heritage can unravel everything. With Farrell hiding his, he does get to play it a little more “American” in a way since it’s a blank slate for a lot of it, but as you learn more about him and his motivations, you see more of the emotions underneath that are surfacing because of how close he is to accomplishing his goals and the closeness that he starts to get with Beatrice, even though he’s being blackmailed into a murder.

In Summary:
Dead Man Down works as a pretty decent crime thriller, though I dislike the “neo noir” label that gets tossed around. It fits well enough though in how it describes the film since it’s dealing with a crime syndicate, the interactions between the various groups and the thuggish level of it at times. I’m not a huge fan of the crime genre overall with only Andrew Vacchs being preferred simply because his works are ones that I feel like they don’t hold back from the ugly truth of it all. With this film, it was enjoyable in its own way since it’s a dark and moody piece that doesn’t go down the absolute path of it all and it’s easy to get drawn into the characters the more that you know about them. The cast is solid and they do a good job with what’s here and Niels Arden Oplev handles the direction well with a strong look to it with how it plays out, both in the two main action scenes and the amount of atmosphere that goes into the setting for the various scenes. It has a realness about it that works. But it’s also not a film that is all that memorable in the long run as the story is decent but not hugely compelling, which is also partially just because of how it tries to be realistic and keeps everyone grounded so there’s no scenery chewing going on here. It’s certainly worth a watch, but not at a premium theatrical price.

Grade: B-