A 'Man' Who Knows His Noir

by Brett Parker

Dead Man Down is a neo-noir thriller which marks the English-language debut of director Niels Arden Oplev, and the film really signifies how much the genre and Hollywood needs people like him right now.  At a time when a lot of tough guy crime thrillers feel like copies of a copy of a copy of watered down ideas, Oplev dazzles us with his economical bag of tricks, which includes slow-burn narrative layers, rich characters who make you feel the ooze of their torment, and a relentless feeling of dread that never stops reminding us how this movie world has too many scary things in common with the real world.  All of these things come together in the end to create what has to be one of the most gripping and involving crime thrillers I’ve seen in many a moon.

As the film opens, we meet Victor (Colin Farrell), a rising player in a crime syndicate led by the ruthless Alphonse Hoyt (Terrance Howard).  Someone has been sending Alphonse and his flunkies ambiguous clues that hint towards a deadly game of revenge in which the crime lord is at the center of.  What starts off as distorted pictures and notes soon leads to the death of one of Alphonse’s comrades with the promise of more violent deeds.  This sends his crew of trusted thugs scrambling to solve the mystery of who could possibly be trying to wipe out the entire gang, although Victor knows more about the situation that he hints at.

Things grow complicated as Victor meets Beatrice (Noomi Rapace), a facially-scarred woman who lives in an apartment building directly across from him.  The two have been exchanging glances from their living room windows across the distance, and Beatrice has decided to break the ice and get to know him.  Yet what starts out as a harmless courtship turns into a dark plot of revenge once Beatrice reveals that she knows a dark secret about Victor and tries to blackmail him.  She wants him to kill the man responsible for the death of her husband or else she goes to the police with his secret.  As Beatrice tries to course Victor into her seething desire for retribution, what she doesn’t realize is that Victor himself is already deep into his own complicated plans for vengeance.  

Oplev is perhaps most famous for directing the original-Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the version that wisely knew how to make its troubled world terrifying while David Fincher unnervingly fetishized it in his American version.  The joy in watching Dead Man Down is the way Oplev allows his foreign values to nest right into a dependable Hollywood genre.  His characters hold a fascinating way of being both paralyzed and driven by concealed pain.  While his protagonists take direct lines of action towards vengeance, it’s that very thirst for revenge that numbs them out from making normal human connections.  This is felt in the way the early courtship scenes between Victor and Beatrice hold the quiet delicacy of trying to munch on potato chips in a library.  Most thankfully of all, Oplev knows how to conceal depths of duplicity and moral decay in his plot and allow them to spring up like baby sharks as the plot rolls along.  The smart script by J.H. Wyman (The Mexican) is ingenious in the way it ties everything together throw hidden motives and sneaky agendas and Oplev makes it burn with a vivid resonance of wistfulness and corruption.   

One of the biggest treats Dead Man Down dishes out is the pleasure of seeing an ultra-cool cast giving expert performances in roles they soar best in.  Colin Farrell gets to employ his action movie smarts and inward nuances to make you feel every inch of Victor’s haunted core.  As Beatrice, Noomi Rapace once again plays an emotionally and physically scarred woman for Oplev, but this time she is allowed more of a feminine vulnerability that is quite heartbreaking.  Terrence Howard finds the perfect villainous role to make great use out his dapper suaveness, smoldering masculinity, and distinct voice.  One of the great mysteries of the current Hollywood mentality is why a unique smoothie like Howard isn’t more of a marquee movie star.  And the cast doesn’t even slum it in the supporting roles, for Oplev is generous in giving us seasoned veterans who could crush these roles in their sleep.  Dominic Cooper, Armand Assante, and F. Murray Abraham bring such color and verve to supporting parts that it helps shade in the reality of this pulp world.

Dead Man Down hits so many right notes that it’s kind of a let-down to find that the film’s climax descends into the usual shoot-em-up and blow-things-up finale that Hollywood is known for.  This bang-bang ending really skewers the painful relish of revenge the characters have been itching for, all while reducing Alphonse from a complex demon to a bumbling baddie.  But I still must admit that I haven’t seen an ending with a car crash and an explosion like this in quite some time.  Still, Dead Man Down is a welcome antidote to the numbskull mentality of Hollywood’s action thrillers and easily the strongest film to come out of this popcorn-trash winter season.  If this film is indeed the first of many in a long, Hollywood career for Oplev, then I hope he shows us many more flicks like this one where pulp formulas are given expert dramatist flourishes towards fascinating multiplex entertainment.