Dead Man Down: Blu-ray Review
The Movie:
Victor (Colin Farrell), a rising gangland player, has infiltrated the crime empire run by ruthless kingpin Alphonse (Terrence Howard), with the single purpose of making Alphonse pay for destroying his once happy life. As he meticulously orchestrates his vengeance from his high-rise home, Victor watches and is watched by Beatrice (Noomi Rapace), a mysterious young woman who lives in the apartment across from his. On the surface a fragile woman-child, Beatrice seethes with a rage of her own. When she uncovers Victor’s dark secrets, she threatens to expose him unless he helps her carry out her own campaign of retribution. Each fixated on avenging the past, they devise a violent and cathartic plan that could change their worlds forever.
To my knowledge this is the first film from WWE Studios to not have a wrestler in a starring role. This, in my opinion was the smartest move they could’ve done. They really should’ve tried to establish themselves as a legitimate studio and picked up movies with big name actors before putting their talent in films. With actors such as these involved in this film it had me even before I popped in the disc. The story was really good and a noir feel to it. There were plenty of “undercover-ness” (yup, just made that up) going on with lots of plotting and scheming as well which made for a nice crime thriller. The film did get a bit slow in spots and I sometimes felt like maybe they could’ve tightened certain scenes up to move it along but in my opinion it was in very few instances and didn’t seem to affect the film in any major way. I’ve seen Farrell in a whole lot of movies and to me he’s meant for dark, gritty roles like this. He has a natural toughness about him that works very well in the high intensity scenes throughout the film. Howard kind of surprised me. He played his character in a way that you could almost say that you could sympathize with him in a sense. If you really step in to his character’s mind then you’ll be able to tell that he’s just a tortured soul looking to be happy. Rapace was as phenomenal as always. Since I’ve seen her in the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo she’s gotten better and better with everything she’s been in. She played Beatrice so well that you could feel for her so much. Just the fact that she was trying to get vengeance from a drunk driver that almost killed her and left her face severely scarred is enough to somewhat root for her in a weird way. I think this was a pretty decent crime thriller that will keep your attention and is worth a view for sure.
Special Features:
Revenge And Redemption: Crafting Dead Man Down – A quick but good “Making Of” feature. Cast talks a bit about their experience on the film.
Revenge Technique: The Cinematography – The director and cinematographers talk a bit on certain ways they shot the film and some of the challenges they were faced with.
Staging The Action: The Firefights – An interesting feature on some of the stunts in the film and the stunt coordinator talks a bit about Farrell doing some of his own stunts.
