Director: Hossein Amini
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Oscar Isaac, Kirsten Dunst, Daisy Bevan.
Distributor: StudioCanal
Runtime: 104 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2014

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Rating notes: Violence and infrequent coarse language

The screenplay has been written by its first-time director, Hossein Amini, whose screenplays are as diverse as Jude, The Wings of the Dove, Drive.

The settings are quite exotic, Athens, the Parthenon and the market, Crete and the historical site of Colossus, and Turkey. And the cast is quite significant, Viggo Mortensen as a financier from New York, Kirsten Dunst as his much younger wife travelling with him, Oscar Isaac as an American tour guide in Athens.

The film takes place over only a few days, starting with people wandering the Acropolis, the suspicions of the financier about the guide and his wife checking him out, finding him credible and their joining him for a tour of the market as well as dinner. The audience knows that the guide has worked a financial trick in the buying of a bangle, so he is the first one under suspicion.

When the couple return to the hotel, a private detective accosts the financial financier and reveals that he has been involved in very shady deals and, with another name, is spending the money on the continent. When difficulties follow, and the guide appears at the hotel to return the lost bangle, the plot becomes quite complicated, and the three arrange for false passports and go to Crete. While there, the financier’s hold on life is lessened by his continued drinking, suspicious of his wife and her relationship with the guide, leading to violence.

The action culminates in Turkey, the final words of the financier altering the direction in which the film seem to be going.

An interesting entertainment but, with its narrow focus, does not have quite the punch that a more popularised version would have.