Friday 10 May 2013

"Deadfall" (Metro 10/05/13)


Deadfall (15) 94 mins ***

Here’s one to add to that slim file marked “Arthouse Directors Who Went To Hollywood – And Lived To Tell The Tale”. In 2008, Austrian Stefan Ruzowitzky scooped the Foreign Film Oscar for his offbeat concentration-camp saga The Counterfeiters; five years on, he’s pitched up in rural Detroit to make a modest crime thriller about characters criss-crossing amid a Thanksgiving snowstorm. Ruzowitzky spends unusual time introducing these folks – fugitive siblings Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde, ex-con Charlie Hunnam, devoted Sissy Spacek and hubby Kris Kristofferson – which allows him to spring surprises with plotting, American-issue family values, and especially with his performers: Wilde, in particular, transforms from saucer-eyed clothes-horse to persuasively wily siren. If the destination proves less intriguing than its various journeys promise, it’s still the kind of craftily assembled, generally watchable B-movie that might merit a gamble should everything else sell out tonight.

Deadfall opens in cinemas nationwide today.

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