Cleanskin (2012)

Time's shrinking, movie options the same... I didn't get to see anything else besides "Cleanskin" this week - randomly picked from an older "to watch" list, and doing this in something like three sessions. What IMDb says about it might seem close to a James Bond. Not even close...

Ash is a young Muslim enrolled in the law school in London, who, unhappy with the reckless life of his girlfriend, breaks up and gets close to a radical group. And like that, in a while ends up involved in planning bombing attacks. Ewan is an ex-military, returned from Afghanistan, who's recruited by the secret services and given the mission of tracking a Semtex case. We have a series of flashbacks providing more background of the two, and finally their paths intersect. How many explosions and what follow-up we have I won't say. I'll say that we have a surprisingly clever script (for what I was expecting), which has much more life drama in it than what the trailer gives you and it also offers an ending twist. Not something very unexpected, but sufficient to consolidate a message that's written pretty much everywhere between the lines: life is not black and white, it's very very gray.

As usual, I'd rather not comment much on the political/social side of the movie. I can tell that it's maybe a bit too often, too brutal and too violent. What's worse is that it also looks sufficiently realistic - again, this is not a Bond movie, which I didn't enjoy. I said it before, I prefer that a movie takes me out of the real life, nu to remind me how scary this is. Somehow, I don't think there's any character left up to the end on who we could say that was a positive one. It manages to kill all your hopes in a world that includes somebody like that :) To conclude, is that type of a movie on which I could say it probably was good, but I didn't like it :) That's all... A, just one spoiler: Sean Bean surprisingly survives this one :)

Rating: 3 out of 5