An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a pretty cool cast involved, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, even though I always had a weak spot for Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman and even though it was really cool to have these 2 actors working together, I’ll have to admit that the damned thing turned out to be rather half-baked after all. I mean, the mood was fine and the beginning was promising. Indeed, even if it was nothing original, I did like the dynamic between these two cousins. However, unfortunately, it didn’t last for long, I’m afraid. Indeed, suddenly, Joel Kinnaman’s started to act really differently and, after the first 10 mins, he became your typical incompetent egomaniacal gangster. It’s not that Kinnaman was bad, in both registers, the Swedish actor was actually fine but, unfortunately, it made his character so much less interesting to follow. Furthermore, as a result, I was then wondering what on Earth Matthias Schoenaerts’s character was then doing with him. Indeed, was he actually his right hand? I’m not so sure but, since his cousin didn’t listen at all to his advice, since he didn’t seem to enjoy this business, why did he stick around? The other thing that didn’t work at all were the flashbacks. Seriously, not only there were rather clunky but what was the added value of these scenes, especially for a movie lasting barely 80 mins? It’s too bad because Ryan Phillippe was actually pretty good and probably gave his best performance in years for this movie. Concerning Maika Monroe, she did look lovely but her character was even less developed than the rest and she was basically given nothing interesting to do. Anyway, to conclude, I think I was maybe to generous with my rating here but I still think it is worth a look though, if only for the fine actors involved.