Credited cast: | |||
Jean-Marc Barr | ... | Hugo Cornelius Toorop | |
Asia Argento | ... | Anita | |
Frances Barber | ... | Eva | |
Andrew Tiernan | ... | Koesler | |
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Alexandra Negrão | ... | Alice |
Edouard Montoute | ... | Oliveira | |
Vernon Dobtcheff | ... | Vitali | |
Johan Leysen | ... | Travis | |
Jean-Christophe Bouvet | ... | Lucas | |
Carlo Brandt | ... | Vondt | |
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François Levantal | ... | Sorvan |
Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
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Rui Alves | ||
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Manuel Antunes | ||
Dominique Bettenfeld | ... | Mitja | |
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Antonio Calpi |
Nearly 13, Alice rebels, telling the Paris police that her mother is a murderer. Alice has no evidence; her mother, Eva, rich and powerful, avoids charges. Alice promptly runs away, determined to find her dad whom she claims lives in Portugal. The police believe he is dead and that Alice is in denial. Nonetheless, they dispatch Anita, an Italian police officer on loan to the French, to find Alice and bring her back. Meanwhile, Eva has launched her own paramilitary force to hunt for Alice, and Alice has found a protector in Hugo, an ex-soldier turned hit man and gang member. He promises to get her to her father. All roads lead to a small town on the Portuguese coast. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Euro thriller is flawed but mostly entertaining. Casting is a typical Euro-pudding mish-mash of international actors and varying accents, with some actors obviously and not particularly well-dubbed. Asia Argento at least does her own dialogue, but some of the voice actors here are stiff enough to be distracting, particularly the girl, who never really generates much sympathy since her line readings have all the emotion of a bored child in language class. The central relationship between the good-hearted mercenary and the girl on the run from men with guns is highly reminiscent of Leon, but without any of the chemistry. Like most European films shot in English the script suffers from frequent, occasionally laughable tin ear for the language. On the plus side the movie is quite stylish and the suspense set pieces are well-constructed and mostly quite effective. On the whole I would recommend this one, but with a more competent English language rewrite and a cast that actually could speak the language, this might have been a far better film.