Ok, so the poster is a little misleading. The deal, as near as I can tell, is that Audrey Tautou was everyone's darling after Amelie so they put her front and center, but she's not really the main character in this film.This turned out to be a completely different movie than I was expecting. I hadn't heard much about it, I don't remember it coming out in theaters, but I like Tautou and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is actually the star, so I bought it. I think I expected it to be something in the vein of The Last Seduction but it's more Extreme Measures, if you catch my drift.
Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an illegal immigrant living in London. He works as an unlicensed cab driver by day and a hotel desk clerk at night. When he absolutely has to sleep, he rents a couch from one of the hotel maids, Senay (Audrey Tautou), an illegal Turkish immigrant, or goes to the hospital morgue to play chess with one of the porters (Benedict Wong). It's not a great life, but he gets by. That is, until he finds a human heart stopping one of the hotel toilets. His boss, Juan (Sergi Lopez), is completely unconcerned but the incident makes him curious about Okwe's past.
It works as a thriller mainly because Ejiofor is so good. I wouldn't say that it's a great movie necessarily, but it might be one that gets better on repeated viewings. It is definitely not one to put in while you're trying to digest your Thanksgiving food baby, though, partly for the content and partly because it's fairly slow-paced. If you're going to watch this, do it on a day where you're awake and perky, not planning your Black Friday excursions.
No comments:
Post a Comment