An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a decent cast involved, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, unfortunately, it turned out to be another misguided and completely unnecessary American remake. Obviously, they had to tweak this story to make it fit the US setting and I have to admit that making the murderer a snitch to an anti-terrorist unit was not a bad idea. However, it was probably the only interesting thing they changed from the original story. Above all, it was a mistake to make the mother of the victim not only a colleage but also a very close friend of the main character. As a result, it completely messed up the fragile balance between the characters and it created an awkward triangle involving Ejiofor, Kidman and Roberts. There was no such triangle in the original version and the biggest victim was the platonic relationship involving Ejiofor and Kidman which used to be fascinating but, with this movie, it actually fell out of place. Seriously, I think that Kidman’s character could have been easily removed and it wouldn't have had such an impact on this version of the story. Another issue was that, since Jessica Cobb and Ray Kasten were such good friends, it didn’t make much sense that she didn’t tell him that, at least, she had killed Marzin. I mean, she knew how much he was hurt, how much he was obsessed by what happened to her daughter so to let him chase this for 13 years seemed rather unlikely. Anyway, to conclude, even though it was another rather half-baked American remake, I guess it is still worth a look but, eventually, you should skip it and watch instead the amazing original Argentinian version.