gjcannon-73149

I'm glad I only rented this at a discount price, and now I can see why it was discounted. Besson has some good films in his cv, though I was never that much of a fan of Subway and the like. This one has yet another beautiful Russian assassin doing what such people do. Lots of twists because the story needs lots to persuade us of its worth. The lead is a model and not an actress, like a few others I can think of.

I did not know this film at all when it screened one night on TV. I was a bit puzzled at not knowing it given the cast of Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and William H. Macy with Marcia Gay Harden adding to the mix. They are all great in this film which reminds me of Donald E. Westlake adaptations like The Hot Rock and The Bank Job. Like them it has great, if hapless, characters, some smart dialogue and clever plotting. Three art gallery guards are shocked to hear that their gallery's contents have basically been sold en masse to a Danish gallery. Each guard has an obsession about a particular favourite piece of their own and they decide that 'their' favourites must be stolen rather than sent all the way to Denmark. It dies not go precisely to plan. Altogether a pleasure to come across a film like this one night on the TV.

Bad guys are moving their 'snow' through snowy logging country and run foul of Joe Braven & family. Set in beautiful winter Newfoundland coastal mountains, it doesn't seem an obvious drug route and an early decision by bad guys seems illogical- they walk 2 miles to hide drugs in the Braven cabin rather than just secrete it in the snow near their crashed vehicle. The bad guys are obviously meant to be ex-military and are ok. Momoa looks pretty limited as an actor. So I don't know that I'll go to see Momoa's films, but I'd certainly go to Newfoundland.