Rutger Hauer is easily the best thing in the movie, he’s genuinely unsettling and carries every scene he’s in.
That said, the film really struggles if you try to read it in a realistic way. The protagonist feels too passive, especially in the first half: he barely gives useful information to the police and doesn’t even clearly warn the girl about the danger he’s in, which makes some decisions frustrating to watch.
Ryder himself is effective as a presence, but his actions don’t fully hold up logically. We’re never given a real reason for why he chooses Jim or why he fixates on him instead of moving on, which makes the plot feel a bit forced at times.
You can read it more symbolically as a story about pushing an innocent person to the edge and turning him into something darker, but it doesn’t feel fully developed.
Or he's just a psychopath with no respect for life seeing someone who has it and try to push him to his limits.
Still, the tension is strong and the action sequences are engaging enough to keep it compelling, even if it didn’t work as much as I hoped.
This was not a cat and mouse game, it was more like hydrogen bomb vs dying ant
~cit
Rutger Hauer is easily the best thing in the movie, he’s genuinely unsettling and carries every scene he’s in.
That said, the film really struggles if you try to read it in a realistic way. The protagonist feels too passive, especially in the first half: he barely gives useful information to the police and doesn’t even clearly warn the girl about the danger he’s in, which makes some decisions frustrating to watch.
Ryder himself is effective as a presence, but his actions don’t fully hold up logically. We’re never given a real reason for why he chooses Jim or why he fixates on him instead of moving on, which makes the plot feel a bit forced at times.
You can read it more symbolically as a story about pushing an innocent person to the edge and turning him into something darker, but it doesn’t feel fully developed.
Or he's just a psychopath with no respect for life seeing someone who has it and try to push him to his limits.
Still, the tension is strong and the action sequences are engaging enough to keep it compelling, even if it didn’t work as much as I hoped.
This was not a cat and mouse game, it was more like hydrogen bomb vs dying ant
~cit
