These tourists have some strange ideas about New York. In “Dead Man Down,” a Danish director and his European actors prove they know this town as well as I know Copenhagen.
Niels Arden Oplev, the Dane who directed the Swedish version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” has made the least of this demented gangland script by “Fringe” writer J.H. Wyman. New York is tough, guys, but not so tough that criminals tote AK-47s around in broad daylight.
Colin Farrell plays a quietly tormented soul who, after a baffling first 40 minutes or so, eventually explains to a neighbor (Noomi Rapace, who was Oplev’s Lisbeth Salander) whose balcony is opposite his that he’s spent the past two years carrying out the nuttiest revenge scheme since that lady astronaut drove cross-country in a diaper to kidnap her man’s new girl.
Victor (Farrell) refused to give up his apartment to some hoods who were taking over the building. So one of the gangsters shot up the place and accidentally killed his daughter. Huh? If someone had a gun, and wanted me to vacate a building, he would just need to show it to me, not discharge it. Also: New York real estate may be ruthless, but it’s a little more subtle.
Stubbornly, Victor, who is Hungarian, went ahead with a plan to testify against the gang. So the lead gangster, Alphonse (Terrence Howard) both a) fixed it so there would be no trial and b) ordered Victor and his wife killed. (Why would you do both of these things?)
Except somebody forgot to actually kill Victor. Alphonse eventually figures this out: On a cellphone (!) while talking to a henchman, Alphonse says, hey, remember that “Hungarian Rhapsody” we talked about? Did you see it through to the final act? Did Victor “take a bow”? Nothing suspicious here.
Next, the gangsters forget about Victor and allow him to infiltrate their gang. “You’re the only one I can trust,” Alphonse tells Victor, never suspecting Victor of sending threatening notes and killing off Alphonse’s henchmen one by one. Side note to all the gangsters out there: If a mysterious newcomer joined your outfit and your foot soldiers started to get whacked, wouldn’t you be a little suspicious of the new guy? If you were a boss, would you let your cellphone out of your sight long enough for someone to plant a bug in it? Would you even use the same cell from one week to the next? And how likely are you to let random strangers join the operation anyway?
For Victor (whose real name is Laszlo, which seems like a would-be “Casablanca” joke that makes as much sense as anything here), revenge is a dish best served complicated. After two years of cat-and-mouse, and sending the boss increasingly obvious clues about who he is and what motivates him, Victor seems to have killed off a dozen or more gangsters. But not the guy who fired the shot that killed his daughter and not the boss who sent him. He even saves Alphonse’s life in a shootout, because he prefers that the boss die in a much more contrived plan that has about as much chance of working as Niels Arden Oplev does of beating out Martin Scorsese for the right to direct a hot crime movie.
One of the supposedly crafty Victor’s kills takes place on his balcony in full view of anyone who happens to be looking out the window of the massive tower opposite. An entertained witness, Beatrice (Rapace) even shoots a video of the murder and tries to use this to blackmail Victor into killing the guy who ruined her face in a drunk-driving collision. Hands up, all those who would wait until they were alone with a known murderer before springing a blackmail scheme on him.
If Europeans want to think New York is 10 times as corrupt and vicious as it was in “Serpico” days, fine. They should enjoy themselves as they scuttle nervously from Madame Tussauds to dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., hands clamped firmly on their valuables. But while a mob thriller can be as nasty as it likes, what it can’t be is silly.