★★
“It’s like Die Hard, in a… building?”
Kitamura is one of the few people to have made two films given our seal of approval: Azumi and Sky High. Throw in the amazing (just not heroine oriented) Versus, plus Godzilla: Final Wars, and there’s a case that in the first half of the 2000’s, he was the best director working in the action genre. But since moving to America, his star has largely faded. This may be the most lacklustre to date, a shameless Die Hard knock-off, which adds nothing except a series of cliches, courtesy of the godawful screenplay by Lior Chefetz and Joe Swanson.
These begin with its heroine, Ali Gorsky (Rose), a Troubled Ex-soldierTM, suffering from PTSD. She has returned to New York, and through a relative, gets a job as a doorman at an apartment building undergoing renovation. It turns out the husband (Evans) of her late sister lives in the building: cue the Family DramaTM. Over Easter weekend, the place is taken over by the villains, under the leadership of Cultured EurovillainTM, Victor Dubois (Reno). He’s after hundreds of millions of dollars of paintings, hidden inside the walls of an apartment, because… Best not ask. And what are the odds? It’s her brother-in-law’s apartment. Fortunately, she’s out getting mint sauce (no, really) when the bad guys come to call. So Ali can spend the next hour, scurrying round the building, picking off the thieves and trying to rescue her family, while exchanging not very witty banter, about zodiac signs and the like.
The problems with the script here are multiple, such as its blatant foreshadowing. Things like the building’s secret passages are dumped in there so blatantly, they might as well be preceded with an intertitle, “THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER.” What’s good, isn’t original – and what’s original isn’t any good. The use of PTSD here is simply a crutch, for no real purpose: we never believe it’s a genuine malady. Meanwhile, there’s Rose, who has done supporting work in other action franchises e.g. John Wick and Resident Evil, but proves incapable of carrying a movie herself. Firstly, she makes for an extremely unconvincing soldier, looking as if she might blow away in a moderate breeze. More damningly, she seems to have just the one expression, a combination of concern and annoyance. While not inappropriate, given the circumstances, it certainly outstays its welcome.
All of which would have tolerable, had the action been up to snuff. By and large, it isn’t, with only very occasional moments of the inventiveness which made Versus such a joy. It doesn’t help that most of the film takes place in half-darkness, leaving the viewer to peer into the gloom and try to figure out what’s going on. I guess this is just about watchable, if you’re in an entirely undemanding mood. However, I keep watching Kitamura movies in the hopes of him recapturing his former glories, and I keep being severely disappointed.
Dir: Ryuhei Kitamura
Star: Ruby Rose, Jean Reno, Rupert Evans, Aksel Hennie