Netflix And Chill: Dead Man Down (2013)

As prone to the whims of Netflix as many others who browse the service, I saw that Dead Man Down was on there are remembered that someone had once told me it wasn't a bad little crime thriller. It was, according to some of the ways I had seen it labelled, actually a neo-noir, which made this month as good a time as any to check it out. And whoever told me that it wasn't a bad little crime thriller was quite correct.

Colin Farrell plays a man working for crime boss Alphonse (Terrence Howard). These are bad people who do bad things. But Farrell has more secrets than most. And that allows him to end up in a position where he can be blackmailed by Beatrice (Noomi Rapace), a neighbour who wants suitable punishment to be administered to the man who disfigured her in a road accident. Farrell is working on a masterplan that is now due to be complicated, Rapace grows closer to him as they prepare to deliver the payback she feels that she needs, and Howard and his crew (including Darcy, played by Dominic Cooper) start to "draw the wagons into a circle" as they deal with someone trying to cause division and death among their ranks.

Perhaps wrongly marketed at the time of release, I recall a lot being made of the fact that this from the director of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which gave Rapace her star-making turn) and I think there was a trailer that emphasised some of the action moments, which is what trailers do. I liked The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but didn't love it. And I wasn't willing to rush out and see Colin Farrell in another action thriller that wasted his talents in the middle of some bland mess. I believe others may have felt the same way (and we can all be thankful that we've had so many better performances from Farrell over the past decade since people stopped trying to sell him in those roles), but don't let that put you off.

Niels Arden Oplev does another good job in the director's chair, giving the film a similar look to his previous outing, but with more rays of light shining through here and there. The script, by J. H. Wyman, who has more experience with TV work than movies, is as good as it needs to be. Based around that old chestnut of "if you set out for revenge then you'd best dig room to serve two cold dishes", or something, the central pairing of Farrell and Rapace works well enough to have you worrying as it looks less and less likely that anything will lead to a happy ending.

Speaking of the two leads, they both do very good work here, even working at various times with various accents. It also helps a lot that the supporting cast has some great players mixed in. Howard and Cooper have large roles, but there are also smaller turns for Isabelle Huppert, F. Murray Abraham, and the always entertaining Armand Assante. A lot of the other cast members are generic gang member types, but that is perfectly fine when you are just waiting to see the bodycount go up and up on the way to a tense third act.

Not an easy film to assume that others will enjoy as much as I did, I still recommend checking it out. The 2-hour runtime flies by quickly enough, the familiar plot is handled well, and there are some surprisingly satisfying moments of violence as soon as the motivation for everything becomes clear.

7/10

You can buy the movie here.
American friends can pick it up here.

Flatliners (2017)

I am not going to tell you that the original Flatliners was a classic horror movie. It was a fun Joel Schumacher film, utilising a fun premise, decent enough script by Peter Filardi, and a cast of hot young stars of the time. I just never thought it as great as some others. I did like it though.

This remake starts with the same basic idea (medical students get themselves involved in experiments that lead to them dying for some time, which subsequently leads to them bringing something back over from the other side). But we get Niels Arden Oplev directing, and a script by Ben Ripley.

Ellen Page is Courtney, the first medical student to come up with the plan to flatline. She actually wants to do so because she thinks reading the data from the experience, as she does it while her brain activity is recorded,  could help deal with certain medical situations. She's joined by Jamie (James Norton), Marlo (Nina Dobrev), and Sophia (Kiersey Clemons). And eventually, reluctantly, Ray (Diego Luna) gets caught up in the whole mess. Things start getting weird, and death isn't necessarily going to let anyone go without a fight.

When it comes to the actual logic of the way events pan out, Flatliners does a surprisingly good job. It starts off as being about more than people just trying to get their kicks, but eventually shows competition between the leads and the element of thrill-seeking involved. Ripley has done a decent enough job of updating a premise that didn't feel too badly dated to begin with, bringing in an interesting element that removes it slightly from the original (although I won't detail that - no spoilers here). It's just a shame that the new element also ends up proving the undoing of the film during the third act. Things feel a bit tamer than they could have been, even compared to the original film, which wasn't exactly pushing the boundaries of the horror genre. 

Oplev directs competently enough, but only just. The scares are, for the most part, the easiest options, the visuals are quite drab and lacking any sense of foreboding or decent atmosphere, and even the grand finale feels more like a whimper than a bang.

Then we have the cast. I like most of the people involved. Page, Dobrev, and Luna are all good enough for me to watch. I can't recall what else I have seen Norton and Clemons in, if anything, but they seemed just fine in their roles. They aren't, however, the hot stars of today. That doesn't make them bad actors, it just removes some of the spark that this premise had when it was first put in front of viewers. I'd imagine that some of you reading this will have no idea who half of these people are, yet we all STILL know Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland (who cameos here), Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin (okay, you don't remember him individually but you know there's a Baldwin clan), and maybe even the great Oliver Platt.

All of these elements add up to make something that's just a bit . . . disappointing. The tame script, the unspectacular and drab visual style, the star cast that doesn't feel exactly stellar. It makes a good attempt to rework the original material but there are too many mis-steps for it to become something decent (even the score by Nathan Barr is just average, at best).

4/10

UK folks can buy Flatliners here.
If in America you can buy it here.