DomuOtomo
I heard about this film and thought 'meh, sounds like a corny action b-film', expecting something along the lines of XXX. But was taken by delightful surprise after seeing it one night on the Movie Network. Olivier Megaton does a very good job filming this movie, with points for action sequences and style. There are no corny one line phrases you see in typical 0ver-rated action films, and it provides a good selection of characters. The action scenes are beautifully filmed, preferably the gun battle in the hotel and the when the film climaxes at Alice's father's place near the end. The rotating camera around Alice as she kills her mother was a pretty damn cool idea. Acting itself was decent, nothing spectacular but nothing to complain about. Good mix of characters and satisfactory storyline. 7.5-8/10
jhs39
Euro thriller is flawed but mostly entertaining. Casting is a typical Euro-pudding mish-mash of international actors and varying accents, with some actors obviously and not particularly well-dubbed. Asia Argento at least does her own dialogue, but some of the voice actors here are stiff enough to be distracting, particularly the girl, who never really generates much sympathy since her line readings have all the emotion of a bored child in language class. The central relationship between the good-hearted mercenary and the girl on the run from men with guns is highly reminiscent of Leon, but without any of the chemistry. Like most European films shot in English the script suffers from frequent, occasionally laughable tin ear for the language. On the plus side the movie is quite stylish and the suspense set pieces are well-constructed and mostly quite effective. On the whole I would recommend this one, but with a more competent English language rewrite and a cast that actually could speak the language, this might have been a far better film.
Mrswing
Another train wreck of an action movie (sort of) from the Besson stable... A totally ridiculous storyline about a girl on the run from her superpowerful mother who is evil incarnate (and makes sure everyone knows it all the tile). The girl gets help from a nice mercenary, who takes her to find her missing presumed dead father in Portugal. Acting is generally dreadful (and given the international cast, it's obvious that many actors have been dubbed - badly). There's no rhythm to the story : the first major action sequence occurs more than halfway into the film. And the second and final major action sequence is a ridiculously choreographed fistfight (without Hong Kong influences, for once). Dialogue is dreadful, the psychology is beyond unbelievable, major coincidences are necessary to keep the plot going... It's amazing that 5 people (including the original author AND science fiction great Norman Spinrad) were involved in writing this turkey. The opening part of the film is visually striking but as things go on, style is forgotten. I guess director Olivier Megaton should change his (pen?)name to Olivier Megadud... He's probably quite good at making videoclips or commercials but shows absolutely no talent for storytelling or working with actors. Which means he's perfect for Joel Silver's upcoming projects! Quick, someone call Hollywood!!!
jean_paul_blanc
This is the kind of movie that allow me to say that French directors are able to make as good action movies as American ones. It's perhaps not so good as "Leon" or "Nikita" from Besson, but it's a new director : Megaton. The fact is that there are not as much electronics gadgets as in American movies, but we can see very nice pictures.