#tbt Dead Man Down review

Dead Man Down was the worst movie I've ever seen to have have such an awesome trailer. Seriously. Here's the link to the trailer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WKmnAcMTKM Just watch it, it's only like three minutes long. Cool, right? That's what I thought back when I saw the trailer in about February. It had a cool neo-noir feel, inter cut with scenes of action timed perfectly with a cover of a fantastic Pink Floyd song. Of course I wanted to see it! I really do applaud this movie's marketing department. I never did get a chance to see this "film" in theaters, but when it was available for rental, I watched it right away. What a mistake. Dead Man Down is dead on arrival. This movie is boring, way to convoluted, and the acting is really pretty bad here. Colin Farrell gets a lot of hate for being a bad actor. I actually think Colin Farrell can be a very good actor when he tries. I thought he was terrific in In Bruges and pretty good in Seven Psychopaths also. His performance (if that's what you want to call it) in Dead Man Down is bland and emotionless. He might as well be playing a wooden board. He has one expression throughout the whole movie, bleak and serious. Noomi Rapace isn't as bad as Farrell here, but she isn't great either. This isn't completely her fault though. The script makes her character seem so vain and annoying, I couldn't care for her at all. Her character, Beatrice, got her face scarred up from an accidental car accident. The guy who did it payed his price and was very sorry. He's just a suburban dad who made a bad mistake. Yet, she wants this guy dead. Beatrice thinks this guy deserves to die for slightly scarring up her face? She can fix her face too with surgery. Colin Farrell's character, Victor, saw entire family killed. She is complaining about a tiny scar to him when he has no family at all. Seriously! Dominic Cooper played the only likable character in the movie, and he barely got enough screen time. Now, you know how in the trailer there are all those cuts of action sequences? Well, those sequences were pretty much only in the last half an hour. And it wasn't even as cool as it seemed. The end seemed like a prolonged video game level instead of a movie! What I expected from this flick was an awesome thriller with tons of action and intrigue. What I got was an overlong, boring, and too complicated movie with some maybe Colin Farrell's most bland performance ever. Neo-noir is one of my favorite genres. Sin City, Memento, and Blade Runner are a few great neo noir films. Dead Man Down is a disgrace to a once fantastic genre. It's directed by Neils Arden Oplev, who did the original Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. That was apparently pretty good. This movie is not. It's trying to hard to be edgy and intriguing, but it comes up short. The only good thing is the cinematography. It's shot in a very dark and cool way. Other than that, Dead Man Down has very little going for it. Maybe my expectations are too high, but I still think it was pretty terrible. The actual plot of it is that this Beatrice girl blackmails the Victor dude into helping her get (unneeded) revenge. Meanwhile, Victor is acting out his own complicated revenge plot. Then they fall in love. There, now you don't have to see it. Now I know I usually review movies I like for my Throwback Thursday reviews. I intend to keep doing that, but Dead Man Down was such a disappointment that I had to warn people. The trailer is good, the movie sucks. That's about it. Happy Viewing, I guess. You can follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies!