From Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy to The Killing, everyone loves Nordic noir, right? Well, trust John Patterson to be the odd man out
Count yourselves lucky, British and European viewers, you're getting your full undiluted ration of subtitled Nordic noir, week in and week out, while we here in the US must subsist on the thin gruel of remakes, with no real recourse to the originals. You got the original Danish The Killing, we got the drippy AMC remake whose first-season finale prompted a near-mutiny among outraged and cheated viewers. The Danish-Swedish cross-border procedural The Bridge – as mesmerising as Homeland to European viewers – gets a Tex-Mex workover here set on the Juárez-El Paso line, and judging by the grimness of its teaser promos, will not stint on those authentically Mexican sky-high bodycounts. We get the Branagh Wallander, not the Krister Henriksson original. Most notorious of all, perhaps, was the least interesting David Fincher movie of all time: his remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Now we have *Dead Man Down*, the first American movie from Niels Arden Oplev, director of the original, leaner and niftier version of Dragon Tattoo, and co-starring its Lisbeth Salander, Noomi Rapace. Oplev declined the second and third parts of the Millennium trilogy, citing impossible time constraints, but I suspect he knew the second and third novels were – in cinematic terms, at least– uninvolving and repetitive, and bailed for that reason.
Dead Man Down, then, his first movie since, seems to be his attempt to follow in the footsteps of fellow Scandinavian noirist Nicolas Winding Refn, who hit big in 2011 with his garish and ferociously assured US debut Drive (when I recently learned Refn was colourblind I thought, 'Well, that explains everything'). But Oplev refuses to make the clean transatlantic break that Refn achieved, and crowds his screen with a baffling array of adrift European actors – Isabelle Huppert as Rapace's ditzy mother, what was he thinking? – and misplaced Euro-style tics (keep an eye out for the changing colours of Rapace's dresses). Matters are only made worse by the neck-ricking plot twists, double identities, coincidences and evasions of JH Wyman's screenplay about a hitman (Colin Farrell) inveigling himself into the confidence of the gangland kingpin (Terrence Howard) who murdered his family, even as he's being blackmailed by his neighbour (Rapace) into killing the man who scarred her face.
Since the Scandinavians have lately been sending movie directors out into the wider world the way Cuba pumps out most of South America's doctors, a misfire like Dead Man Down serves as a useful reminder that, unlike Cuban doctors, not all of Nordic noir is excellent. Even Steig Larsson's fabled Millennium trilogy looks a bit threadbare these days, like someone you're embarrassed you once dated. I wonder if Fincher, like Oplev, will ever bother finishing that trilogy?
John Patterson
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 hours ago.
Count yourselves lucky, British and European viewers, you're getting your full undiluted ration of subtitled Nordic noir, week in and week out, while we here in the US must subsist on the thin gruel of remakes, with no real recourse to the originals. You got the original Danish The Killing, we got the drippy AMC remake whose first-season finale prompted a near-mutiny among outraged and cheated viewers. The Danish-Swedish cross-border procedural The Bridge – as mesmerising as Homeland to European viewers – gets a Tex-Mex workover here set on the Juárez-El Paso line, and judging by the grimness of its teaser promos, will not stint on those authentically Mexican sky-high bodycounts. We get the Branagh Wallander, not the Krister Henriksson original. Most notorious of all, perhaps, was the least interesting David Fincher movie of all time: his remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Now we have *Dead Man Down*, the first American movie from Niels Arden Oplev, director of the original, leaner and niftier version of Dragon Tattoo, and co-starring its Lisbeth Salander, Noomi Rapace. Oplev declined the second and third parts of the Millennium trilogy, citing impossible time constraints, but I suspect he knew the second and third novels were – in cinematic terms, at least– uninvolving and repetitive, and bailed for that reason.
Dead Man Down, then, his first movie since, seems to be his attempt to follow in the footsteps of fellow Scandinavian noirist Nicolas Winding Refn, who hit big in 2011 with his garish and ferociously assured US debut Drive (when I recently learned Refn was colourblind I thought, 'Well, that explains everything'). But Oplev refuses to make the clean transatlantic break that Refn achieved, and crowds his screen with a baffling array of adrift European actors – Isabelle Huppert as Rapace's ditzy mother, what was he thinking? – and misplaced Euro-style tics (keep an eye out for the changing colours of Rapace's dresses). Matters are only made worse by the neck-ricking plot twists, double identities, coincidences and evasions of JH Wyman's screenplay about a hitman (Colin Farrell) inveigling himself into the confidence of the gangland kingpin (Terrence Howard) who murdered his family, even as he's being blackmailed by his neighbour (Rapace) into killing the man who scarred her face.
Since the Scandinavians have lately been sending movie directors out into the wider world the way Cuba pumps out most of South America's doctors, a misfire like Dead Man Down serves as a useful reminder that, unlike Cuban doctors, not all of Nordic noir is excellent. Even Steig Larsson's fabled Millennium trilogy looks a bit threadbare these days, like someone you're embarrassed you once dated. I wonder if Fincher, like Oplev, will ever bother finishing that trilogy?
John Patterson
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 hours ago.