On the one hand, there’s a revenge thriller with shootouts, car chases, detective work, and a dynamite climax. On the other, there’s a woefully underwritten love story that can’t think of anything else but to have the leads stare at each other. And not the meaningful kind of staring either — Farrell spends about five-eighths of the flick with this sad/confused expression that looks like he caught his mother in bed with a clown.
Farrell plays Victor, an up-and-comer in a gang led by Alphonse (Terrence Howard). What the gang actually does is not entirely clear, but they appear to be connected to a cocaine-dealing group of British-Jamaicans, at least until Alphonse suspects them of assassinating one of his men and orders the whole lot killed. In the ensuing shoot-out, Victor is wounded, and we follow him back to his ramshackle highrise apartment, where he spends his days watching videos of his wife and kid and ogling the girl in the next building over (Noomi Rapace).
The girl, Beatrice, lives with her somewhat hard-of-hearing mother (Isabelle Huppert) and is haunted by the scars on her face left by a car accident with a drunk driver. She and Victor share pregnant waves to each other until Bea works up the courage to ask Vic out.
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