Dead Man Down - 1 smile

As “Dead Man Down” moves through its labyrinthine plot, piling one implausibility upon another, you finally throw up your hands in surrender and stop giving the film the benefit of the doubt. Bullets fly, bodies plummet, a mysterious man is held prisoner in an abandoned tanker, a lush suburban apartment gets destroyed in a lengthy (and improbable) climax. Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the original Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in 2009, has a bigger budget, more star power and an awful script by J. H. Wyman.

Someone is undermining the criminal enterprise of slick New York gangster Alphonse (Terrence Howard) and after a few false leads, the saboteur is revealed to be Victor (Colin Farrell), new to Alphonse’s crew. And, unfortunately for us, Victor’s plan to get revenge on Alphonse for murdering his wife and child is way more intricate than it needs to be. To complicate matters more, there’s Beatrice (Dragon Tattoo star Noomi Rapace), an emotionally and facially scarred woman whose high-rise balcony faces Victor’s. She has plans to involve Victor in a revenge plot of her own. While “Dean Man Down” has a European noir look, its filmed in a New York that apparently has no cops. This is a movie to skip.  2/17/13