Where did this film go wrong? Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard and Dominic Cooper can all be terrific actors. Niels Arden Oplev obviously knows what he's doing as a director since he did make the brilliant original The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Yet....to sit through Dead Man Down is an arduous process. It is a sloppy, off-pace, redundant thriller with a few individual cool scenes that most certainly stand out as scenes. Howard, Rapace and Cooper are excellent here but Farrell drags them down with him by having a performance that seems as if it's in an entirely different film.
The film stars Farrell as Victor---a thug who meets up with his neighbor, Beatrice (Rapace) in which she tells him that she has video footage of him murdering someone. She then asks Victor to double-cross his boss, Alphonse (Howard) all the while Victor's co-worker and friend, Darcy (Cooper) is onto him.
The main problem I had with the film was the premise. This could have potentially been a cool premise but as written and directed---the film just feels like another people double-crossing each other film. As well---at 2 hours---the film feels way too long for its own good. After a while...everything just becomes jumbled together and begins to feel redundant. Also...the way that Oplev paces the film is ridiculous. I don't mind a slow paced film but Dead Man Down feels like a four hour film rather than a two hour one.
Although it doesn't fail to an extraordinary degree...Dead Man Down still could have used much improvement. It never manages to really go anywhere and yet it does have a few cool scenes scattered throughout in it. Where it does go wrong is in the pacing, direction, writing and awful performance from Farrell and that is enough to make me not recommend it. "
(2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for violence, language throughout and a scene of sexuality)
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