Dead Man Down Reviews
Bloomberg News
Revenge never felt less sweet.
Full Review
| Original Score: **
Daily Star
There are a couple of decent action scenes but this is just too ridiculous to be taken as seriously as it expects to be. With a slight re-edit, it could be re-released as Naked Gun 4.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Flix Capacitor
Dead Man Down feels like two different films struggling against each other. One a brooding Euro thriller, the other a clunky Hollywood actioner. Neither really works.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Examiner.com
Dead Man Down is really sluggish at first, but tends to be really compelling in this overpowering "so bad it's good" kind of way. Good, bad, even "Dead Man Down" can't seem to decide.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5.5/10
Schmoes Know
It doesn't help the effort to be serious when the villains are so cartoonish and simple they should've tried to plant their crime ring in Oz
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Slant Magazine
The action merely meanders when it should be hurtling forward, running in circles when one expects it to head toward a conclusion or some sense of resolution.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Digital Spy
By the time Dead Man Down descends into ultra-violence, you'll be long past caring.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Screen It!
Oh, to be Colin Farrell and look simply smashing in a pouring rainstorm, a raging wind tunnel or bleeding profusely from the head. Too bad he can't look good while acting out a bad screenplay. (Complete Content Details for Parents also available)
Little White Lies
Any film in which Isabelle Huppert is cast and then given absolutely nothing to do is a crime against cinema.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Movie Nation
Random, ridiculous, badly acted. Maybe it would make more sense in Swedish, with subtitles.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Birmingham Mail
As with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Oplev uses darkness to convey atmosphere despite the overt crispness of the movie's digital look. Some old-fashioned celluloid grain would have done it the world of good.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
The List
This convoluted thriller's nondescript title is a pointer to its flaws: unfocused and overlong, its swill of criminal characters and sub-plots feel like an unfinished work-in-progress ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top CriticExplores a common ground for noir thrillers before stumbling and imploding in a climax that feels like it might have been hijacked from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
What the Flick?!
There's a crazypants crime movie and the damaged-people-find-each-other relationship movie, but together, it's a jambalaya that doesn't work.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/10
Daily Express
You are left feeling sorry for the actors who do their best, including Britain's Dominic Cooper, wasted as a dorkish gangster colleague of Victor's.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
ScreenCrush
I can see people renting this over VOD. I can also see a lot of people turning to the person next to them on the couch and asking "do you want to finish this?"
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/10
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Whoever made the trailer for Dead Man Down is a genius because that quick assembly of moments from the movie is exciting, clear and clever -- all the things the movie is not.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Daily Telegraph
This is too dull to function as a thriller and too silly to qualify as anything else.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Tulsa World
This is murky stuff plot-wise, but there's something odd and original about the relationship between Farrell's and Rapace's characters, in their mutual vengeance and shared pain.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
It's all so much turgid brooding, dialogue underlined with import, and leaden symbolism involving Rapace's white and red dresses, none of which is salvaged by a typically understated Farrell performance.
