Tag Archives: Hitman

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

01 Monday Apr 2019

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D: George Armitage / 107m

Cast: John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Joan Cusack, Hank Azaria, K. Todd Freeman, Jeremy Piven, Mitchell Ryan, Michael Cudlitz, Benny Urquidez

Martin Q. Blank (Cusack) is a hitman with a problem: he’s feeling miserable, and he’s unhappy with his work. He’s at odds with his boss, Grocer (Aykroyd), over plans to unionise the hitman “business”, and is made more unhappy when a contract goes wrong. Persuaded by the combined efforts of his therapist, Dr Oatman (Arkin), and his secretary Marcella (Cusack), Martin agrees to attend his high school’s tenth anniversary reunion – and while he’s there he can carry out another contract. Back in his home town of Grosse Pointe, Blank catches up with his old friend, Paul (Piven), and his old girlfriend, Debi Newberry (Driver). Though he walked out on her on the night of the prom, and hasn’t been back since, Martin and Debi soon reconnect, and attend the reunion together. But Martin is being stalked by another hitman, Felix LaPoubelle (Urquidez), and when Martin is forced to kill him in one of the school corridors, the aftermath is witnessed by Debi, who runs off. And matters are made even worse when Martin discovers that the target he’s there to kill is none other than Debi’s father, Bart (Ryan)…

If you had to sum up the appeal of Grosse Pointe Blank, then its dialogue would be a great place to start. This short monologue by Martin to his shrink Dr Oatman about the reunion is a perfect example of just how finely tuned much of this movie is, and also how it doesn’t take itself very seriously (a good idea in a comedy about a hitman developing a conscience): “They all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs, and, you know, they’ve all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do. What am I gonna say? “I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How’ve you been?” It’s carefully crafted moments like this one – fluid, satirical, and very funny – that ensure the movie has a lightness of touch and doesn’t look and sound like it’s trying too hard. Instead it maintains an even, modest tone throughout, and focuses more on the characters than the action. In Martin Blank, the screenwriters (including Cusack himself) have created a sympathetic hitman whose “moral flexibility” belies a natural charm and wit that make the character more rounded and less stereotypical than usual, so much so that when he does have to kill someone – the corridor fight with LaPoubelle is a highlight – the intensity he displays is borne out of necessity rather than a fundamental flaw in his personality. The only real flaw is that he’s believed himself incapable of living a normal life for all these years.

Cusack is terrific in the role, deftly handling the various elements thrown into the mix – drama, comedy, romance, action – and displaying a versatility across genres that had been hinted at before this, but never fully exploited. The cast as a whole are on good form, from Cusack’s sister Joan as Blank’s faithful yet caustic secretary, to Piven’s lovelorn best friend, and Arkin as the therapist who remains unconvinced when Blank reassures him he’s not a target. Even Driver and Aykroyd, acquired tastes unless in the right surroundings, are likeable, and Armitage makes sure that everyone gets enough exposure to warrant them all making an impact. He also directs with a visual flair that’s unexpected, and in conjunction with DoP Jamie Anderson, keeps the movie from settling into a standard action comedy format. It’s a movie that’s full of surprises, touching in places but never too far from another quip or pithy observation, and though it ultimately treads an overly familiar romantic path, there are enough detours along the way to make it feel fresher than most. The action is well handled and expertly choreographed (a little ragged, but in a good way), and there’s a terrific soundtrack from Joe Strummer. All in all, it’s a movie that wants its audience to have a good time, and which achieves that ambition with skill and aplomb, and without having to employ the time honoured process known as shakabuku.

Rating: 8/10 – with various shades of light and dark that allow for differing perspectives on what it means to be a hitman, and a wicked sense of humour that Cusack et al exploit at every given opportunity, Grosse Pointe Blank is an absolute delight from start to finish; still as entertaining now as it was back on first release, it’s a movie that may have dated in terms of the costumes and the hairstyles, but beneath all the horseplay there are universal themes in play to help anchor the frothy, carefree nature of the main storyline, and ensure that the movie resonates with audiences in more ways than one.

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Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

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Mechanic Resurrection

D: Dennis Gansel / 99m

Cast: Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Tommy Lee Jones, Michelle Yeoh, Sam Hazeldine, John Cenatiempo, Toby Eddington, Femi Elufowoju Jr, Anteo Quintavalle

Meh.

Rating: 3/10 – a terrible sequel that lies dead on the screen, Mechanic: Resurrection features some of the worst green screen work ever (the opening fight in Buenos Aires), a plot that makes absolutely no sense at all, and performances from all concerned that border almost on perfunctory – if only they could have made that much effort; action movies don’t have to tie up every loose end or narrative loophole, but this has a script that just doesn’t know when to give up and go home, making it one of the worst experiences you’re likely to have at the cinema all year.

Monthly Roundup – July 2016

31 Sunday Jul 2016

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Crawl (2011) / D: Paul China / 80m

Cast: George Shevtsov, Georgina Haig, Paul Holmes, Lauren Dillon, Catherine Miller, Bob Newman, Andy Barclay, Lynda Stoner

Crawl

Rating: 7/10 – a hitman (Shevtsov) hired by an unscrupulous bar owner (Holmes) winds up injured while trying to leave town, and ends up playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a waitress (Haig) when he seeks refuge in her home; a slow-burn thriller that takes its time and relies on tension and atmosphere to keep the viewer hooked, Crawl often belies its low budget, and features terrific performances from Shevtsov (in a role written expressly for him) and Haig, but stops short of being completely effective thanks to some awkward narrative choices and first-timer China’s lack of experience as a director.

The Asian Connection (2016) / D: Daniel Zirilli / 91m

Cast: John Edward Lee, Pim Bubear, Steven Seagal, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Byron Gibson, Byron Bishop, Eoin O’Brien, Michael Jai White

The Asian Connection

Rating: 3/10 – career criminal Jack Elwell (Lee) meets the love of his life, Avalon (Bubear), and decides that robbing a bank is the way to a financially stable relationship, but unfortunately the money he steals belongs to crime boss Gan Sirankiri (Seagal), and soon Jack is being coerced into robbing more of Sirankiri’s banks when one of his men (Boonthanakit) threatens to expose him; what could have been a moderately entertaining action thriller is let down by some atrocious acting (and not just from Seagal), some equally atrocious camerawork, editing that looks like it was done with a hatchet, and the kind of direction that gives “point and shoot” a bad name, all of which leaves The Asian Connection looking like something to be avoided at all costs.

Banshee Chapter (2013) / D: Blair Erickson / 87m

Cast: Katia Winter, Ted Levine, Michael McMillian, Corey Moosa, Monique Candelaria, Jenny Gabrielle, Vivian Nesbitt, Chad Brummett, William Sterchi

Banshee Chapter

Rating: 3/10 – a journalist (Winter) looks into the disappearance of a friend, and discovers a secret world of government experiments that are linked to strange radio broadcasts and the discredited MK Ultra program from the Sixties; a paranoid thriller with supernatural overtones, Banshee Chapter tries extra hard to be unsettling and creepy – much of it takes place at night and has been shot using low light – but fails to make its story of any interest to anyone watching, which means that Winter and Levine put a lot of effort into their roles but are let down by the tortuous script and Erickson’s wayward direction.

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) / D: Ron Howard / 122m

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson, Michelle Fairley, Paul Anderson, Frank Dillane, Joseph Mawle, Charlotte Riley

In the Heart of the Sea

Rating: 5/10 – the writer, Herman Melville (Whishaw), convinces retired sailor Tom Nickerson (Gleeson) to talk about his experiences as a young boy at sea, and in particular his time aboard the Essex, a whaling ship that encountered a creature Melville will call Moby Dick; based on the true story of the Essex, and the voyage that saw it sunk by an enormous whale, In the Heart of the Sea is technically well made but lacks anyone to care about, avoids providing a true sense of the enormity of what happened, sees Ron Howard directing on auto-pilot, and leaves Hemsworth and Walker struggling to make amends for characters who are paper-thin to the point of being caricatures (or worse still, carbon copies of Fletcher Christian and William Bligh from Mutiny on the Bounty).

The Notebook (2004) / D: Nick Cassavetes / 123m

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Sam Shepard, David Thornton, Joan Allen, James Marsden

The Notebook

Rating: 7/10 – in the late Thirties, a young man, Noah (Gosling), sets his cap for the girl of his dreams, Allie (McAdams), and though they fall in love, social conventions keep them apart, while in the modern day their story is told by an old man (Garner) to a woman with dementia (Rowlands); handsomely mounted and told with a genuine feel for the central characters and their travails, Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook is an old-fashioned romantic drama that could have been made in the time period it covers, and which is bolstered by the performances of its four stars, as well as Cassavetes’ (son of Rowlands) sure-footed direction, glorious cinematography by Robert Fraisse, and a sense of inevitable tragedy that permeates the narrative to very good effect indeed.

Apache War Smoke (1952) / D: Harold F. Kress / 67m

Cast: Gilbert Roland, Glenda Farrell, Robert Horton, Barbara Ruick, Gene Lockhart, Harry Morgan, Patricia Tiernan, Hank Worden, Myron Healey

Apache War Smoke

Rating: 6/10 – a stagecoach station finds itself under attack from angry Apaches after a white man kills several of their tribe – and the evidence points to the station agent’s father, a wanted outlaw (Roland), as the killer; a compact, fast-paced Western, Apache War Smoke zips by in low-budget style thanks to the efforts of two-time Oscar winner Kress – editing awards for How the West Was Won (1962) and The Towering Inferno (1974) – and a cast who enter willingly into the spirit of things, making this studio-made Western set in Tonto Valley Station(!) a surprising treat.

Mr. Right (2015)

29 Friday Apr 2016

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Mr Right

D: Paco Cabezas / 95m

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick, Tim Roth, James Ransone, Anson Mount, Dennis Eklund, RZA, Katie Nehra

There were two movies released in 2015 with the title Mr. Right… and this isn’t the other one (which, to clarify, stars Columbus Short and Erica Tazel, and doesn’t have a screenplay by Max Landis). This one is definitely the wackier of the two, a broad mix of comedy, action and romance that exists in the same universe as American Ultra (2015), and which allows Sam Rockwell to do what he does best and ooze more charm than any leading man has a right to.

The set up is a simple one. Martha (Kendrick) dumps her boyfriend when she finds out he’s seeing someone else. Depressed and turning to alcohol for comfort she lacks the confidence to believe that she’ll ever find that elusive Mr. Right. But a chance encounter in a convenience store leads to her going on an impulsive date with a guy (Rockwell) whose name she doesn’t even find out (and not until much later). Their relationship soon blossoms into a romance that is surprising to both of them, even when the guy makes apparently flippant remarks about killing people. It’s only when Martha actually sees him kill someone that she returns to believing there isn’t one man on the planet who’s right for her.

Mr Right - scene2

Now the guy is a hitman (as you may have suspected). But he’s kind of reformed. He still kills people, but in a neat moral turnaround, he kills the ones who hire him (and tells them that murder is wrong before he does). Martha’s guy is also being tracked by his former mentor, Hopper (Roth), who is pretending to be an FBI agent. Hopper’s bosses want Martha’s guy dead, but they may have to wait in line, as the man Martha sees him kill is connected to a Mafia family, and they now want him dead as well. With her new beau being shot at and attacked by what appears to be all-comers, Martha has a decision to make: does she walk away and settle for someone half as interesting and special, or does she take a chance on love?

(Well, we all know the answer to that one, don’t we?)

There are two reasons to watch Mr. Right, and they’re the script by Max Landis, and the performance by Sam Rockwell. Landis is making quite the reputation for himself, and with scripts for this, American Ultra, Chronicle (2012) and errr… Victor Frankenstein (2015) under his belt, he’s certainly a writer to watch, and while the basic conceit of a hitman who kills the people who hire him is a novel one, where Landis scores highly is with the romantic portions of the movie. As Rockwell’s off-centre hitman and Kendrick’s semi-doofus pet store worker get to know each other and fall hopelessly in love, Landis provides both actors with the kind of snappy, winning dialogue that makes each scene they share a pleasure to watch. Where else are you going to find lines such as, “That’s a lot of condoms. You’ve got enough to choke a goat”, or “And Martha Agatha, it’s just a double menopause punch in the… it’s brutal”?

Mr Right - scene1

With Landis making the most of the romantic aspect of the movie, and creating such a winning relationship, it’s almost a shame that the murderous actions of Roth’s determined ex-colleague and Ransone’s duplicitous Mafia scion, Von, have to take over for the obligatory action-packed second half. It’s a stroke of genius then that Landis introduces the character of Steve (RZA), ostensibly a disposable gun for hire who proves to be a match for Mr. Right and earns his respect. It’s a funny, unexpected role, and RZA plays it perfectly. But this is Rockwell’s movie, and as the titular anti-hero he brings his A game, infusing his character with a joie de vivre that is both infectious and  charming in equal measure. He brings so much to the role of Mr. Right that it’s almost impossible to keep up with everything he’s doing in any given scene. It’s the kind of portrayal that won’t win any awards but is breathtaking in its effortless simplicity – and completely makes up for his sleepwalking turn in Poltergeist (2015).

With Rockwell firing on all cylinders and fully engaged with the material, it’s good to see Kendrick having fun as well as Martha. It’s not a role that’s any kind of a stretch for her, but she’s funny and adorable, and a great foil for Rockwell (and despite the obvious difference in their ages). Roth shows off his comic chops as well, imbuing Hopper with a studied insouciance that pays dividends throughout (look out for an early scene as he accurately predicts the fates of a group of guns for hire as they try to take down Mr. Right in a hotel). Less satisfactory however are the performances of Ransone and Eklund as the Mafia heavyweights who pick the wrong assassin to off their in-charge brother (Mount). Whenever they’re on screen, caricature and enforced stupidity aren’t far away, and their characters are almost cartoon-like. It’s hard to tell if the root cause is Landis’s screenplay, Cabezas’ direction, or the actors’ performances. Maybe it’s a combination of all three, but whatever the reason, they’re the movie’s only real disappointment.

Mr Right - scene3

In the end, Mr. Right is lightweight, enjoyable stuff that doesn’t require too much thought but still manages to entertain consistently and with a fair degree of brio. Cabezas’ last outing was the less than stellar Rage (2014) with Nicolas Cage, and like Rockwell with Poltergeist, he’s on better form here, showing a confidence in his handling of what is effectively a genre mash-up that yields sterling results, and stops the movie from straying in any one direction at the expense of the others. He’s ably supported by DoP Daniel Aranyó, who finds some unusual angles to make the action sequences more invigorating, and an exuberant score by Aaron Zigman.

Rating: 8/10 – there’s so much to enjoy in Mr. Right that it’s tempting to watch it again straight after seeing it for the first time; with an on-form turn from Rockwell and a great script by Landis, the movie is a minor outing that rewards above its weight and will keep you smiling throughout, even when it’s being patently absurd.

Trailer – Mr. Right (2015)

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

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The kind of “edgy” romantic comedy that we all know is going to be both mushy and appealingly sentimental at heart, Mr. Right is the latest from the pen of Max Landis – Chronicle (2012), American Ultra (2015), and, uh, Victor Frankenstein (2015) – and brings together Sam Rockwell (the title character) and Anna Kendrick in a tale that promises lots of comedy and some well-choreographed fight scenes. Rockwell is the hitman who’s developed a moral code (he kills the people who hire him instead of the intended victims) and who meets Kendrick’s Martha, a young woman whose last relationship ended badly. Their romance is hopefully the heart of the movie, but there’s bound to be plenty of action as Mr. Right finds himself being hunted down by his employers. With a supporting cast that includes Tim Roth, RZA, James Ransone and Michael Eklund, the only concern is the director, Paco Cabezas, whose last movie was the less than inspiring Rage (2014) starring Nicolas Cage. But festival audiences have taken to the movie so perhaps this will prove as entertaining and endearing as its makers intended.

The Prince (2014)

25 Monday Aug 2014

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Prince, The

D: Brian A. Miller / 93m

Cast: Jason Patric, Bruce Willis, Jessica Lowndes, John Cusack, Gia Mantegna, Jeong Ji-Hoon, Johnathon Schaech, Don Harvey, Tyler J. Olson, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson

Paul (Patric), a mechanic working in a small town in Mississippi, has an only daughter, Beth (Mantegna), away at college.  She’s due home for a weekend visit but she fails to show up.  Worried that something has happened to her, Paul travels to the college and checks her room, where he finds a picture of Beth and another girl outside a bar.  He goes to the bar and in time the girl turns up.  Her name is Angela (Lowndes), and while she can’t tell Paul where Beth is, she does know that she was seeing a dealer called Eddie (Olson).  She helps him track Eddie down to New Orleans, and in the process, comes to learn that Paul isn’t just a mechanic, but that he has fighting skills she’s never seen before.

When he finds Eddie, Paul discovers that Beth has left him to go live with a more dangerous drug dealer known as the Pharmacy (Jackson).  Paul pledges to rescue her and tries to persuade Angela to go back home, but she refuses.  Meanwhile, Paul’s arrival in New Orleans is reported to ruthless crime boss Omar (Willis).  Twenty years before, Paul was responsible for the deaths of Omar’s wife and daughter.  Now, Omar sees his chance for revenge.  Paul seeks help from old friend, Sam (Cusack) while he goes to rescue Beth.  He discovers that the Pharmacy has been told by Omar to keep Paul there, but he takes Beth and escapes during the subsequent gunfight.  Back at Sam’s, and as they’re preparing to leave, Omar’s second-in-command, Mark (Ji-Hoon), ambushes them and manages to get away with Beth.  Paul follows him to Omar’s, and a final confrontation between the two.

Prince, The - scene

At ninety-three minutes, one thing that The Prince does have in its favour is a fairly short running time.  Otherwise, this is yet another heavily padded, strictly by-the-books crime thriller with an invincible hero, a bad-ass villain, and a damsel in distress. With such a predictable nature, the movie struggles from the outset to provide its audience with anything new or different, even down to the scene where Omar has an employee killed for being out of line, just so we know how bad-ass he is (the fact the employee is standing next to a pool and looks incredibly nervous is also a bit of a giveaway as to what’s going to happen).

As the titular Prince, Paul is a methodical, no-nonsense, quietly threatening ex-hitman who hasn’t lost his touch, but who is also hard to like and thanks to Patric’s portrayal and the script’s lack of humour, comes off as colourless and remote.  When he rescues Beth from the Pharmacy there’s so little emotion he might as well have been retrieving a can of peas he’d left behind at the grocery store.  Paul is a character who seems estranged from everyone except Beth, and even then he seems to be trying a little too hard, as if he can’t quite work out if he’s doing things in the right way or not.  It makes his interaction with Angela unnecessarily stilted and repetitious, and their scenes together suffer accordingly.

Paul’s determination to get Beth back is laudable, but with such a lack of emotion on his part, his efforts don’t have the resonance that even something as contrived as Taken (2008) and its two sequels have (yes, Taken 3 will be with us in 2015).  What emoting there is in the movie is left to Angela – who keeps saying how shocked she is by each turn of event or revelation – and Omar, whose need for revenge is almost pathological (though as usual, he holds off on killing Beth long enough for Paul to turn the tables on him).  Lowndes is okay, but Angela is a character that never rings true, allowing herself to go with a man she doesn’t know to New Orleans for $500, and who stays around when the bullets start flying and the bodies start piling up.  Willis plays Omar as controlled at first but soon ramps up the ham, and by the movie’s end he’s dispensed entirely with characterisation and gone completely for caricature.

With minor support from Mantegna (sidelined for most of the movie), and Cusack (winning this year’s Nicolas Cage Award for Worst Hairstyle), The Prince ticks all the boxes when it comes to low-budget movie-making, with its dull, uninspired script courtesy of Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore; poorly edited and choreographed action sequences (the showdown between Paul and Mark is the worst example); trite, repetitive dialogue; clumsy framing and photography; lacklustre direction; and the kind of approach that almost screams “Doing it purely for the money!”  Several moments are of the wince-inducing variety (e.g. Jackson’s attempts at acting), and despite all the gunplay and dead bodies, not one police officer makes an appearance at any point in the proceedings, which only serves to highlight the improbability of everything that happens.

Rating: 3/10 – a nail in the coffin of several careers (though probably not the last one), The Prince is a ham-fisted attempt at an urban western but without any of that genre’s appeal or distinctive flavour; entirely derivative and short on imagination, this is one crime thriller that can safely be avoided.

The Family (2013)

08 Sunday Dec 2013

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Family, The

D: Luc Besson / 111m

Cast: Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones, Dianna Agron, John D’Leo, Jimmy Palumbo, Domenick Lombardozzi, Stan Carp, Vincent Pastore, Jon Freda

Having ratted on his bosses in the Mob, Giovanni Manzoni (De Niro) and his family – wife Maggie (Pfeiffer), daughter Belle (Agron) and son Warren (D’Leo) – are living in France under the Witness Protection Program.  Following an incident at their placement on the Riviera, the Manzonis are moved to a quiet Normandy town where their handler, CIA agent Robert Stansfield (Jones), hopes they’ll settle down and stay out of trouble. While the Manzonis (now the Blakes) try to fit in, a hitman (Freda) is trying to track them down.

Each member of the family does their best to adapt to their new surroundings but with varied results.  Giovanni begins writing his memoirs, Maggie takes an interest in a nearby church, Belle fends off the advances of the local teenage boys and falls in love with a mature student, while Warren takes over the various rackets at their school.  They all encounter problems along the way, and each deals with these problems in their own way: Giovanni with violence, Belle with violence, Warren with violence, and Maggie with violence but then followed by her making confession.  It’s their inability to fit in without reverting to their Mob ways that causes Stansfield to threaten them with yet another relocation, especially after he reads Giovanni’s memoirs and realises how dangerous they could be if anyone outside the family were to read them.  But then the hitman and his gang find them, and everyone has to pull together to keep the Manzonis alive.

Family, The - scene

Ostensibly a comedy, The Family is ultimately a bit of a mixed bag.  Besson, directing from a script co-written with Michael Caleo, adds drama, romance, action, a lot of casual violence, a wonderful moment for De Niro at a film screening, and a soupçon of domestic troubles.  The main characters are well-drawn: Giovanni is both naturally aggressive and yet also quite melancholy and thoughtful, while Maggie appears lonely and struggling to adjust; she’s a mother whose role is no longer as clearly defined as it was back in New York.  Belle is sophisticated and yet naïve at the same time: she misunderstands the situation with the mature student, and takes too much for granted.  And Warren finds he’s not quite the clever gangster he thought he was.  All four actors are on top form, De Niro providing a world-weary performance that belies the uncompromising mobster he’ll always be at heart; he’s a joy to watch.  Pfeiffer revisits her character from Married to the Mob (1987), and gives a shaded turn where her unhappiness at her family’s situation is offset by her obvious pride and love for them.  As the children, Agron (from TV’s Glee) is confident, poised and vulnerable, and D’Leo plays Warren with an equal confidence that is impressive for his age.

What spoils the movie though is the continuing shifts in tone.  Beginning with a hit on a family (and providing Freda with a great entrance) that is horribly violent, the movie shifts uneasily between moments of light humour – there are no really laugh-out-loud moments in the movie – and more and more extreme bouts of violence: Belle taking a tennis racket to a teenage boy’s face, Giovanni fantasising about pushing a man’s face onto a barbecue grill.  These episodes, meant to remind the audience perhaps that these people, after all, were part of the Mob and have done some horrible things in the past, serve only to show that, Giovanni’s writing aside, the experience of being in the Witness Protection Program hasn’t changed them at all; if anything, they are using their unique skill-sets to dominate their community just as they used to do.  It’s this lack of personal improvement or growth that undermines the characters and makes them appear close to stereotypes.  There’s also an unpleasant whiff of institutionalised racism that runs throughout the movie, with the Manzonis the target of some unvarnished cultural attacks (“they eat hamburgers morning, noon and night”); the family’s only response is to have a barbecue for their neighbours where they serve only American food, and of course, the French all go away very happy.

The movie also isn’t quite as funny as it thinks it is, and shifts in tone aside, fails to hit the mark too often.  It’s largely predictable and while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing with this type of movie, with the cast involved you’d hope for something a little richer, and with more surprises.  The final shootout is well-staged and shows Besson is still more than adept at shooting action scenes.  The preceding set-up is equally well-staged and quite gripping.  If only the previous hour and a half had been the same.  That said, Thierry Arbogast’s photography is deceptively fluid and gives certain scenes an almost painterly finish, and the score by Sacha and Evgueni Galperine subtly enhances things throughout.

Rating: 6/10 – only fitfully entertaining, and saved by strong performances; The Family won’t change your life, but then it hasn’t changed theirs either.