On the face of it, Dead Man Down holds a lot of promise – re-uniting the director of 2009’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Niels Arden Oplev, with its star Noomi Rapace, for a tale of revenge and betrayal. The result though, is a silly confection that has little in common with the high quality crime drama coming out of Denmark today. This first excursion into Hollywood film for the Danish director is more like the disappointingly flimsy U.S. remake of The Killing than the taut, gloomy Danish original.
Rapace plays Beatrice, a woman living under the shadow of a car accident which left her with facial scarring and an obsession with the drunk driver who caused her suffering. In the opposite apartment lives Victor (Colin Farrell), a player in New York’s gangland. When Beatrice witnesses Victor committing an act of violence, she blackmails him into helping her get revenge. Victor though, is in the midst of his own plot of retribution against gangland boss Alphonse (Terrence Howard).
The strange thing about Dead Man Down, is that on the surface, there is very little wrong with it. Oplev has a good eye for coherent action sequences and a knack for wry comedic touches. The two leads work well together – Farrell broods and Rapace seethes. Howard meanwhile has fun chewing the scenery as the jittery crime-boss. So far, so good…
Unfortunately, there are several fundamental incongruities within the plot that pulled me out of the film completely. You know that part of The Phantom of the Opera where the Phantom finally removes his mask and you think, well, you’re no oil painting but hiding down in the sewers is a tad overdramatic? Well, there’s a similar situation with Rapace’s facial injuries. It’s not believable that her relatively superficial scarring causes people stop and stare and the local youths to dub her “Monster”. Victor’s quest for vengeance also hits a logical pothole as we are led to believe that he managed to master an impeccable American accent and inveigle his way into organised crime in the space of a few months.
These foibles make Dead Man Down a frustrating watch; not terrible by any means but hopelessly average. Denmark may be hot right now but here a lot has been lost in translation.