Its a tossup which of these perfectly crafted bits of patter in the unwitting gangland noir parody Dead Man Down takes the cake for over-the-top irrelevance.
Do you want Rabbits dont come in chartreuse?
Or how about Thank you for returning my Tupperware?
The former is delivered by Colin Farrell, Dead Man Downs taciturn, tough-guy protagonist, a hitman who has made the acquaintance of his emotionally and physically scarred apartment building neighbor, Beatrice (Noomi Rapace). She gives him a shocking-green rabbits foot for good luck. Farrell does his best to sound Bogie-esque as he offers his matter-of-fact observation. If theres irony there, its lost on Beatrice. And on Farrell, too.
The Tupperware line belongs to Isabelle Huppert, the great French actress consigned to a few short scenes here as Beatrices hearing-impaired but nonetheless impossibly snoopy mom. She and Beatrice live on the 18th floor of a building in Queens, where they can stare (moodily) from the windows at the Manhattan skyline or, from another vantage, stare straight into the apartment of Victor (Farrell).
Set in New York (but filmed, in large part, in Philadelphia), Dead Man Down teems with thugs and mugs, with references to dead Jamaicans and troublesome Albanians. The film has been directed in a murky, rhythmless fashion by Niels Arden Oplev, who directed Rapace in the original and terrific Swedish-language The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Farrells Victor is the aide-de-camp to a crime lord named Alphonse (Terrence Howard), who holes up in a manor and is increasingly on edge, thanks to a series of cryptic notes and menacing cut-out photographs hes been getting lately.
Three months of letters! he anguishes. Three months of torment! If only he could find the culprit somebody who crosses his 7s, European-style.
And then Pauly, another mobster, shows up in a basement freezer, a very cold stiff. Unsettling, no?
You dont need to be a genius to figure out that Victor may not be the loyal soldier Alphonse takes him for. Beatrice figures it out soon enough, trailing Victor as he sets up his snipers rifle on a building roof. Pity the fool in the wine bar below.
But it takes Darcy (Dominic Cooper), Victors gangmate and best buddy, almost the entire movie to arrive at the same conclusion. His moment of revelation prompts yet another screenwriting gem: You lied to me! he says to Victor. The godfather of my son!
Talk about betrayal.


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