Dead Man Down Reviews
Top CriticA way-too-leisurely thriller whose destination is fairly obvious from early on, but to which the talented cast apply themselves with effortful seriousness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Explores 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
While a mob thriller can be as nasty as it likes, what it can't be is silly.
Full Review
| Original Score: 0.5/4
More a dark fairy tale about vengeance than the action-packed crime thriller it purports to be, the film is at times exhilarating, bold, and beautiful -- when it's not busy being ludicrous, fragmented, and just plain stupid.
Dead Man Down is a very serious thriller featuring very serious stars being very serious about the seriousness at hand.
This blend of Scandinavian gloom and Hollywood hokum never jells.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Yep, there's a whole lot going on here, but this is one of those plot-heavy scripts that carries its weight with confidence - the intricate twists don't cheat.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Perhaps if Farrell and Rapace and Oplev had all stayed in Europe - and tried to do a similar script, with half-as-much firepower, and twice as much brainpower - they might have had something worth watching. Instead it's just something worth ducking.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The film has been directed in a murky, rhythmless fashion by Niels Arden Oplev, who directed Rapace in the original, and terrific, Swedish-language The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
A moody twist of hyper-violent vengeance and heartache where death is hand-delivered, mercy is hard to come by and love is never easy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
A derivative collection of brazen plot holes and latenight-cable cliches.
The cautionary adage about weaving tangled webs in the process of deception certainly applies to Dead Man Down, an overwrought thriller brought to ground by its own contrivances.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
As a gritty thriller, Dead Man Down doesn't stand out among its bullet-riddled brethren.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The movie might have been better if its Swedish director, Niels Arden Oplev, had played with the genre clichés stuffed in this turkey instead of going for straight-up action.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
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.
In the end, a viewer can do little more than appreciate Dead Man's shimmering look and wish all involved better luck in their next endeavor.
The screenplay by J. H. Wyman is squirm-inducing in its preposterous dialogue and haphazard plotting.
That crack cast still keeps things involving, especially Rapace's emotionally and physically disfigured Beatrice.
Before it devolves into typical American-style action, there's an intriguing, European-style complexity to Dead Man Down.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Before this urban revenge melodrama falls apart in a clatter of plot absurdities and pretensions, it has its loopy charms.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
