If you can get past Shia LaBeouf as a gap-year slacker taking a trip to Bucharest after his mother’s death, Fredrik Bond’s techno-fuelled comic thriller is an effective enough placeholder until the real ‘next True Romance’ comes along. The whimsy can be a little overwhelming — Rupert Grint as a would-be porn star, Mads Mikkelsen as a drug lord called Nigel — but there’s energy in the chase scenes and a vulnerability we don’t see enough of in the much-maligned LaBeouf, who falls for a gangster’s moll (Evan Rachel Wood) and starts the story hanging upside-down with a gun pointed at his heart.
The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman Review
Mourning his mum, Charlie (LaBeouf) heads to Bucharest planning to drown his sorrows in a deluge of drugs, booze and throwaway sex. But when he falls in with Evan Rachel Wood's recently orphaned cellist and then runs foul of Mads Mikkelsen's gangster, his trip takes a turn for the unpredictable.
Release Date:
14 Feb 2014
Running Time:
108 minutes
Certificate:
TBC
Original Title:
Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman, The
A caper thriller that's sufficiently zippy to hold the attention. LaBeouf's current notoriety adds extra piquancy to those urban fight scenes.
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