Rating: D
Dir: Frédéric Petitjean
Star: Jean Reno, Sarah Lind, Joe Anderson, David Gyasi
a.k.a. Cold Blood Legacy
I’m not saying this was some kind of tax dodge or money laundering scheme for an arms trafficker. But if someone were to make a movie to serve those purposes, the end result would probably be as lacklustre as this. In it, the Ukraine attempts to stand in for the Pacific Northwest, and Reno plays a tired assassin who reads The Art of War, taking care of a young woman. Not only does the assassin, Henry, seem tired, but Reno also seems pretty bored with the whole thing. Twenty-two years after his iconic turn in Léon: The Professional, I can hardly blame him. Petijean even nicks Besson’s cinematographer, Thierry Arbogast.
Here though, the woman is at least an adult, Charlie (Lund), whom Henry takes in after she has a snowmobile accident near his remote lodge. It might have worked better if the film had stayed there. It’s clear from the start that Charlie’s presence is not coincidental. But exactly what the situation is, and who is playing who, does not get revealed until much later. You probably won’t be surprised, put it that way, yet it’s still a reasonable premise. Instead, the film cuts away to a charisma vacuum on legs, Detective Kappa (Anderson). He’s investigating a hit carried out by Henry in New York, which for some poorly-explained reason takes him to the state of Washington. Literally every scene in which he appears. drains proceedings of all energy, as if Anders were some kind of cinematic vampire. It’s almost impressive.
The non-American location renders a fair chunk of this slightly surreal. The number of foreign accents present is far higher than you would actually get in the Pacific Northwest, and as noted, Petitjean seems to have no real idea about American law enforcement practices. He’d have been better off setting everything in France, with Henry, sorry Henri, hiding out in the Alps. But that might not have qualified to be, and I quote the end credits, “Produced with the support of the Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government”. What the hell does Belgium have to do with this? I refer you to my opening sentence.
One other thing in the closing scroll made me take pause. An extensive acknowledgement for “Security” goes to a group called by a curious name: “The Golden Lions of the Black Hundred.” The Black Hundreds seem a rather dodgy, pro-Russian and antisemitic Ukrainian group, who fought on the side of the Russians when they invaded. Not exactly people I’d be thanking in my movie credits. I, again, refer you to my opening sentence. At least when Uwe Boll makes movies, allegedly for tax purposes, the results can be entertaining. I feel this should be a requirement in order to obtain the subsequent financial breaks: you need to show the completed film to your local tax board. If they don’t like it, you’re on the hook for it all.
That I have written the above, should give you a good idea of how little entertainment is to be found in the actual movie.