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Blog by Don Kennedy

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Dead Man Down

Dead Man Down is written by J.H. Wyman one of the writers for the filmed in Vancouver Fringe series and stars Colin Farrell who brings his A game and lost bad boy face to the character of Victor. He has a budding voyeuristic relationship with Beatrice (Noomi Rapace) the shy but receptive girl seemingly sequestered with her mother in the opposite tower to his New York apartment. He’s a man with baggage plus an agenda and thus is reluctant to get involved.  He succumbs to her come on only to find that her intentions are to blackmail him into doing some lethal retribution. Turns out she has evidence of his criminal activity while in the employ of the ruthless gangster Alphonse (Terrence Howard). Victor has no choice but to comply with Beatrice even though it is a distraction from his own revenge agenda not to mention his job with Alphonse who is trying to contend with a serious threat on his life. Although Victor and Beatrice start out as antagonists they gravitate towards a mutual guardianship which ironically puts each in peril. Rapace we remember as the original Girls with the Dragon Tattoo and is clearly remembered by Niels Arden Oplev who directed that film and this one which unites three divergent European accents under one neutral North American patois – Farrell from Ireland, Sweden’s Rapace and England’s Dominic Cooper who plays Victors criminal soul mate Darcy. They all do a great job of keeping it real and unlike this gritty double dose of vengeance, they never fizzle.

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