Synopsis
Trained to protect. Born to survive.
A counter-terrorism expert takes a job protecting a young heiress. After an attempted kidnapping puts both of their lives in danger, they must flee.
2019 Directed by Vicky Jewson
A counter-terrorism expert takes a job protecting a young heiress. After an attempted kidnapping puts both of their lives in danger, they must flee.
Noomi Rapace Sophie Nélisse Indira Varma Eoin Macken Akin Gazi Sargon Yelda Abdellatif Chaouqi George Georgiou Christopher Sciueref Kevin Shen Olivia Jewson Huw Parmenter Cherise Silvestri Robin Kermode Anna Marie Sullivan Mansour Badri Fatima Herandi-Rawya Nouredine Touami Mehdi El Ouazzani Youssef Kerkour Mimi Keene Lauren Harris Charley Palmer Rothwell Jonathon Michaels
Jewson Film Whitaker Media Piccadilly Pictures SQN Capital Lipsync Productions BCP Asset Management The Fyzz WestEnd Films
Close - Dem Feind zu nah, Escolta
Vicky Jewson’s “Close” transparently aspires to be something of a female riff on Jason Bourne. However, shot in only 29 days — and with a fraction of the budget for an average Hollywood blockbuster — it feels more like a proof-of-concept for an idea that the film industry has already proven (e.g. “Salt,” Tomb Raider,” “Haywire,” etc), and a dull reminder that studios need to invest more of their resources into it. Whatever inherent value there might be in gender-flipping such a generic template is mitigated by the movie’s reluctance to seize on the unique energy that its women bring to the table.
The film doesn’t have to justify casting a lead who isn’t named Chris or Matt, but Jewson…
The Equalizess. very cool that women can finally have their own boring, vaguely racist DTV revenge action movies too.
The opening credits tease something a bit more Bond-ish than this is really after, but it's still a satisfyingly terse character piece peppered with brief bursts of violence.
Noomi Rapace (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) is a badass, pure and simple. And in Close she does it again, playing battle-hardened bodyguard Sam Carlson. Sam, is all business, hired to protect a spoiled mining heiress played by the Sophie Nélisse (Book Thief), with the talented Indira Varma (Rome, GoT) as her mother.
Overall, the action scenes are gritty fun and quite riveting, especially the first sequence which demonstrates how badass Sam the bodyguard really is. However, beyond these action sequences, the script which is written and directed by Vicky Jewson, is somewhat lacking in plot complexity. And unfortunately on multiple occasions I found myself guessing what was going to happen next. When an assassination…
The movie had a strong start that going downhill throughout its runtime. Good acting by Noomi and Sophie, doing their best with the script that could have been a lot better. Thin story with a lot of gaps.
NETFLIX (ULTRA 4K)
2.35:1
Color
Codex
15
Noomi Rapace not eight years ago was touted for greatness as the next best European rising star and aside from Prometheus and The Drop casting directors have seemed to all but forgotten about the talented actress. Close is yet another sub-par action film that does little to showcase either her terrific range or impactful charisma. A shame because she's a bright sparkling diamond in the rough.
50
Netflix’s Close is an action film that succeeds in crafting authentic female characters.
Written and directed by Vicky Jewson, Close was inspired by the life of female bodyguard Jacquie Davis. The character-driven action thriller tells a story of survival and the destructive actions of corporate greed. But tied to all this are two female characters who are complex and whose relationship is the film’s foundation.
Close opens with the film’s protagonist, Sam (Noomi Rapace), in the middle of a war zone. As a counter-terrorism expert, this is what she’s used to. But she is taken out of her usual element when she is assigned to essentially babysit the spoiled heiress Zoe (Sophie Nélisse), who is to inherit the fortune of…
Who do you think you are?
-Zoe Tanner
An below average action thriller that somehow hornswoggled Noomi Rapace to star in it. I wondered how writer/director Vicky Jewson got her to be in the film, which led me to wonder who Jewson is as I’ve never heard of her and I just ended up with more questions the further I looked into it.
This is Jewson’s third film, her two previous ones were critically panned but I noticed that she had won an award for film making. More precisely she won the Arts, Media & Culture Woman of the Future Award for her exceptional work directing Lady Godiva. Here’s what’s bizarre; she won that award in November 2006, before she had…
Noomi Rapace almost has enough action movie presence to carry a shitty production by herself. Almost.
The only redeeming features of this film are its fight scenes, and Rapace is one of the select group of female actors working today with enough physicality to convincingly sell brawling violence. Close reaches its apex with a nice extended sequence in which a handcuffed Sam Carlson (Rapace) tangles with a henchman in an increasingly brutal encounter. The level of nastiness in that fight was noteworthy enough to take some of the sting out of yet another bad decision to slum the Netflix-exclusive lands.
Other than that, Vicky Jewson sloppily perpetrates a wasted outing in what could have been a decent cinematic violence fix…
Words can't express how bored this movie made me feel. Desert Taken could have been a lot better than this if anyone decided to actually have a little fun with this overdone premise.
More movies like this should be 90 mins instead of 140. It's basically Extraction with a much lower budget. It kinda falls apart at the end when the action choreography dips and stops making sense.
this type of movie is 100% my bread and butter though lol.
I've supposedly seen this before, but I don't remember it all.
Acting is fine, but plot and characters aren't there at all
After watching What Happened To Monday, I thought I would go through Noomi Rapace's movies and start with one I had seen advertised all over Netflix. This isn't at all the action packed thriller the trailer makes it out to be but with that being said, Rapace is incredible.
The film had a lot of potential but just fell off when a certain plot point was established but never fleshed out and just withered away really.
Never thought I'd say this but this film needed to be longer.
A tense action picture that contains some great cinematography and fight work, and even though the emotional payoff is worth it, the story stumbles a bit to get there.
This was a decent film to watch, nothing special about it but it kept me engaged.
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