Tag: Noomi Rapace

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★★½
“…but no cigar”

Rapace appears to be aiming for a niche in the straight-to-video (or, at least, straight to Netflix) action market, this coming on the heels of Unlocked and What Happened to Monday. The results thus far have been rather uneven, and this seems unlikely to move the needle of his career much further forward. Not that the issues here are her fault; more that “being good in underwhelming movies” is not a passport to success. She plays Troubled Bodyguard (TM) Sam, who is hired to act as protection for Zoe (Nélisse), who just inherited a phosphate mining company, after the death of her father. Zoe got a bit too friendly with her last bodyguard, if you know what I mean, so Zoe’s stepmum (Varma) wants a woman this time.

Naturally, there’s a kidnap attempt. which sends Sam and Zoe on the run through Morocco. Is Mom, who was cut out of her husband’s will in favour of the daughter, responsible? Or is it the rival Chinese company, with whom there’s a battle over Zambian phosphate rights? The answer is: who cares? The film certainly doesn’t seem to, dropping elements like Sam’s estranged daughter in, then never doing much with them. See also the shotguns built into the walls of the family mansion. A better movie would have milked this great idea for all it was worth, but here, it’s thrown away in one blast. Instead, we get the inevitable blossoming of the relationship between the two women, who gradually come to understand each other, blah blah blah.

The action is intermittent, and probably not enough – a shooting schedule of barely four weeks likely played into that, chat being easier to film than fighting. There is a cool sequence where Sam battles someone with her hands literally tied behind her back, and a nice opening which establishes her bad-ass credentials, defending journalists from insurgent attack. Otherwise, Atomic Blonde this is not: an underwater combat scene (complete with CGI fish) being more risible than memorable. Rapace holds up her end of the dramatic requirements well enough; Nélisse, unfortunately, less so. Immediately she demands Sam go feed her Pomeranian, her character is tagged with the “rich bitch” label, and never escapes that ghetto.

This might have worked better as a limited series – although that territory was recently mined by Bodyguard, for which Richard Madden won a well-deserved Golden Globe. It would have given scope to dig further into Sam’s character, something definitely needed here. Her character was, apparently, inspired by real-life female bodyguard Jacquie Davis, who has been working in the field since the beginning of the eighties, and was the first such in the United Kingdom. There are a million possible stories to be told there, for example, her mission to Pakistan to rescue a pregnant woman kidnapped by her husband. She says, “We had to storm the villa by paying a taxi driver to ram the gates,” and then escaped the country over the mountains with the army in pursuit, because then-President, Benazir Bhutto, had recognized the bodyguard. Compared to that, what we get as a story here falls well short of a thrilling tale.

Dir: Vicky Jewson
Star: Noomi Rapace, Sophie Nélisse, Indira Varma,

Unlocked

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★★½
“Lisbeth Salander vs. Elf”

That would have been a more appealing title. Although the incredibly generic one here reflects the incredibly generic plot, which sinks this, despite the efforts of a well above-average cast. CIA agent Alice Racine (Rapace) has, at her own request, been assigned to the backwater of an East London community, after blaming herself for failing to stop a bombing in Paris. She’s called out of her semi-retirement to interrogate a terrorist courier, believed to be carrying a message about an imminent biological attack on a US target in London. She cracks the subject and hands over most of the intel, only to discover the recipients are not the agency employees they claimed to be, and will kill her as soon as they get what they need. She goes on the run, unsure of who she can still trust: her mentor (Douglas), the MI-5 boss (Collette), or a burglar she encounters who happens to be a former British commando (Bloom). Can she stop the attack before it’s carried out?

Yeah, if you ever wanted to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo go hand-to-hand against Legolas, this film is for you. Anyone else? Probably not so much. It’s the kind of striking boilerplate spy vs. spy shenanigans we’ve seen a lot of lately. This reminded me particularly of Survivor, with Rapace standing in for Milla Jovovich, though to be honest, neither film makes much impression – and what they do, isn’t necessarily good. For example here, I spotted what the target was going to be as soon as it was mentioned, and a laughably long time before the movie’s characters were able to work it out. I hope American’s real intelligence assets are considerably smarter than the ones depicted in this film. The way in which Bloom’s character, Jack Alcott, is shoehorned into proceedings is no less clunky, and the story overall has no flow, lurching through the components to its finale (obviously not endorsed by the NFL, given the non-specific names used!).

The positives here are mostly from the performances, with the exception of Bloom, who seems woefully mis-cast – though it may partly be my difficulty in taking anyone with a man-bun seriously. Rapace gives a good account of herself, kicking ass with terse efficiency, particularly when escaping from the hotel room where she’s carrying out the interrogation. Collette, previously known to us from United States of Tara, turns out to be as good with a British accent as she is with an American one, especially considering she’s neither (Australian). There’s also John Malkovich as the CIA boss, and he’s watchable as ever, albeit underused. Seems like the Czech Republic largely stood in for London, which may help explain the limited sense of place, and Apted’s direction is little better here than in one of the more underwhelming Bond flicks of recent times, The World is Not Enough. Rapace needs to keep looking for the right vehicle, one which will make use of her undeniable talents.

Dir: Michael Apted
Star: Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette, Michael Douglas

What Happened to Monday

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★★★½
“Seven Noomis for the price of one!”

In the future, overpopulation becomes such a problem that strict limits are placed on children per family. You are only allowed one, with any others being taken by the authorities and put into “cryosleep”, so they will no longer consume resources until the situation has been addressed. After a woman secretly gives birth to septuplets, their grandfather, Terrence Settman (Dafoe), brings them up, rigidly schooling their actions so they remain under the radar. Each gets to go out on the day of the week corresponding to their name e.g. Monday on Monday, etc. On their return, they share with their siblings the events of the day, so the illusion can be sustained. 30 years later, with their grandfather gone, the seven women have evaded capture, though tensions between the different personalities are growing. Then, one evening, Monday simply doesn’t come back. The following day, neither does Tuesday. The remaining sisters have to try and figure out what’s going on, without exposing themselves.

There are strong hints of Orphan Black here, the TV series in which Tatiana Maslany played multiple clones, with distinct personalities, who end up working together to uncover a conspiracy. That ran for five seasons, truly flogging a dead horse into the ground, and the concept works a good deal better at the two hours for which this runs. Though even here, the third quarter does somewhat run out of steam. The main pleasure is the seven different versions of Rapace – and, indeed, the seven mini versions seen in flashblack, played by Read. Watching them bickering around the dinner table is a marvel on both technical and acting levels. Despite limited screen time, Rapace imbues them with distinguishing characteristics that mean you can tell the players without a scorecard. Though, again, the third quarter gets rather murky in this area, especially when two versions start rolling around, brawling with each other.

Wirkola is best known for Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (a film which, like the Resident Evil series, performed much better overseas), and has a similarly stylish grasp of the action here. Though not all the seven sisters are action-oriented, some of them most definitely are. The highlights are a chase through the streets of the city, and a misguided attempt by the authorities to storm the apartment where the sisters are embedded. It does not go well. These sequences likely work rather better than the plot. As well as my doubts a subterfuge like this could be sustained for three decades, despite Settman’s undeniable commitment to it, I must confess I’m with Nicolette Cayman (Glenn Close), head of the Child Allocation Bureau. She points out the grandfather’s actions are thoroughly selfish: he feels that rules for the necessary good of all, should only apply to other people, not his descendants. The story likely also needs a better antagonist: someone against whom the Noomis can directly battle. Cayman is largely absent and operating at just too much of a distance to qualify.

There’s still more than enough here to appreciate, with a well-crafted dystopian world which seems not implausible – see China’s “one child policy,” for instance. But it’s really Rapace’s show, and the actress builds on the intensity shown in the Millennium Trilogy. She seems to have both a fondness and a talent for action: Noomi likely has as good a claim to being the current Queen of European Action Heroines as anyone.

Dir: Tommy Wirkola
Star: Noomi Rapace, Clara Read, Marwan Kenzari, Willem Dafoe

The Millennium Trilogy

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★★★½
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I think we know the exact moment we fell in love with the character of Lisbeth Salander, the central character both in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and the Swedish films based on the books. It would be the scene in the first film where she goes back to see the man who had been sexually abusing her. Little did he know, on her last visit, she had recorded the whole event. This time, she knocks him out, ties her assailant up, forces him to watch the video and then engages in a spot of amateur tattoo work, leaving him with “I am a sadistic pig and a rapist” etched permanently across his torso. Yeah. You go, girl.

Salander is not your typical action heroine: she’s 5’4″, weighs maybe 90 lbs dripping wet, and anti-social to a degree that may be pathological. But she possesses a mind like a steel-trap, impressive computer hacking skills, a steely resolve and a zero-tolerance policy for anyone who abuses women [the Swedish title of the first book and film translates as “Men Who Hate Women”, and misogyny is something of a theme throughout the trilogy]. This was demonstrated very early: at the age of twelve, and fed up of seeing her father hurt her mother, she doused him in petrol and set him on fire. Like I said: “zero-tolerance”.

We first meet Lisbeth in Dragon Tattoo, using her skills to conduct surveillance on Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist), a journalist who has just lost a libel case and is facing prison as a result. As a result of her report, Blomkvist is hired by Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), to investigate the disappearance, forty years previously, of his niece Harriet, who was also Blomkvist’s babysitter. It has been nagging at Vanger ever since, and he feels his time is running out to find the truth. Reviewing the evidence, Blomkvist finds names and numbers in Harriet’s bible, but it’s Lisbeth, helping ‘remotely’, who cracks the code, revealing them to be verses from Leviticus about punishing sinners. The two gradually peel away the years to reveal the truth, a serial-killer whose crimes go back to just after the war – a truth that proves very uncomfortable for some in the Vanger family.

To some extent, Lisbeth is secondary to that plot, but she also has her own concerns to deal with. After the incident involving her father, she spent most of her youth under psychiatric observation. Even after release, she is still effectively ‘on probation’, under the control of various court-appointed guardians. The latest, a lawyer named Bjurman (Andersson) is a truly slimy jerk, who abuses his position to extract sexual favours from Lisbeth. After all, she’s just a little girl – what could she possibly do? See the opening paragraph for specifics there, if you’d forgotten.

Dir: Niels Arden Oplev
Star: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube, Peter Andersson

★★★★
The Girl Who Played with Fire

It’s in the second film, Fire, that Lisbeth really comes into her own. After a period traveling the world, she returns to Sweden, and pays a visit to Bjurman, who has been looking into tattoo removal – she warns him off doing that, threatening him with his own gun. However, she leaves the gun behind, and Bjurman then uses it to frame Lisbeth for the murder of two crusading journalists, who were working on a story exposing sex traffickers, and those using the women they provide, for Blomkvist’s magazine. With both the police, and the real perpetrators – the criminal gang who control the traffic – trying to track her down, Lisbeth is forced underground. Fortunately, Blomkvist is able to help, as Lisbeth turns the table and goes after the shadowy “Zala” who leads the crime syndicate.

There’s a number of very interesting aspects to the film, such as how Blomkvist and Salander don’t meet until the final scene – I can’t think of many other film where the two central protagonists do that [Heat comes close]. But it’s most memorable for the unstoppable force which Salander has become, utterly fearless, whether it’s taking on a pair of bikers or going into the heart of enemy territory. Even when you think it’s all over for her, she crawls her way back in a way which would make The Bride applaud. It’s curious, yet somehow entirely fitting, to see her as an updated, adult version of another Scandinavian literary and cinematic icon: Pippi Longstocking. Except, to steal a line from Romy and Michelle, she’s like a Pippi who smokes and says “shit” a lot.

Salander’s personality is abrasive, and she clearly has difficulty relating to people or showing them anything even approximating affection: the closest she gets is a bewildered silence. I think the only time we saw her give a genuine smile was in the third film, when she received news that someone she hated had been killed. And yet, people like Blomkvist warm to Lisbeth, initially pitying the circumstances in which she finds herself, yet eventually seeing the human beneath the multiple layers of defensive ice. Fiercely loyal to her (very few, admittedly) friends, and as lethal as a boxful of well-shaken, peeved rattlesnakes to her enemies, the second film proves her to be smart, and as quick with her fists as her brain.

Dir: Daniel Alfredson
Star: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Yasmine Garbi, Paolo Roberto

★★★½
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest

The third film, like the second, has Blomkvist and Salander apart for almost the entire movie; they meet only right at the end, in a way which is as low-key and unobtrusive as an Ikea coffee-table, yet somehow feels entirely appropriate. This time, their separation is because Salanger is in custody for attempted murder, following the events at the end of Fire. The secret group in authority, whose activities are in danger of being exposed, intend to avoid the embarrassment of a trial by getting Salander certified as insane, so she can be locked up as mentally incompetent. This brings her back to confront Dr. Peter Teleborian (Ahlbom), the man in charge of the institute where Lisbeth spent two years. However, Blomkvist asks his lawyer sister, Annika (Hallin), to take up the case. Can they reveal the truth before Lisbeth is committed to Teleborian’s sinister care one more?

While undeniably a good end to the trilogy, tying up the loose ends and dishing out justice in a solid, satisfying way, it seems a shame to have Lisbeth locked up for 95% of the film. This is much more a purely-investigative thriller than the first two, which were more action-oriented. Here, there’s a fight in a restaurant for Blomkvist, and Salander’s only action is an admittedly impressive battle in a warehouse against an unstoppable force. Much as at the end of the first movie, she doesn’t actually kill the opponent herself, though here, that would be more due to a lack of ammunition for her impromptu weapon. While a nice final act by which to remember Salander, it’s not representative of her more passive role in this entry.

The trilogy of books have sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, though sadly, Larsson didn’t see their success, as he died in 2004, before they were published. The success of the films, which have grossed a total of more than $210 million worldwide – a phenomenal sum for any non-English language series – has led to the inevitable Hollywood remake. Pause for eye-rolling here… Except, the American Tattoo does have David Fincher at the helm, so I’ll wait until seeing it – while, naturally, reserving the right to administer a good kicking in due course. The first pictures of Rooney Mara as Lisbeth (right), don’t exactly inspire confidence, as she looks more like some kind of coked-up fetish supermodel than anything else. Daniel Craig plays the role of Blomkvist, which would seem to make him a bit more glamourous too.

I guess we’ll see, but Fincher and Mara will certainly have their work cut out. I can’t help thinking of the lukewarm remake of another, highly-lauded Scandinavian movie, Let the Right One In, and the overall history of such things is not cause for optimism. But even in a worst case scenario, we’ll still have the books and Noomi Rapace’s steel-cold portrayal. Wikipedia says that when Larsson was 15 years old, “he witnessed the gang rape of a girl, which led to his lifelong abhorrence of violence and abuse against women. The author never forgave himself for failing to help the girl, whose name was Lisbeth,” even though much of his life was spent fighting oppression, in various forms. But with his creation of a new style of heroine, one appropriate for the 21st century, Larsson has, unwittingly, perhaps achieved redemption.

Dir: Daniel Alfredson
Star: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Annika Hallin, Anders Ahlbom