One day, two ex-cons kidnap a millionaire’s daughter, bound her to a bed in a sound-insulated vacant apartment and holds her up for ransom or else she dies. As the clock ticks, Laura discovers that she may have a relationship with one of the kidnappers that she never expected and that the two men hold a secret that one could not have expected. Sounds strangely similar to The Disappearance of Alice Creed, doesn’t it? Well in fact, not only is Reckless’ narrative similar to Alice Creed’s, it’s pretty much an exact shot-for-shot, almost word-for-word remake with the only difference being that it’s all in Dutch instead of English. It’s like as if the film was styled and crafted by déjà vu.
It’s almost an inverse to the ever-growing problem of English-language remakes of foreign-language films, like Let the Right One In/Let Me In and both versions of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. What we have here is something that is dangerously similar to Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho, with everything being copied and pasted from Alice Creed, but lacking the edge, soul, wit and integrity of the original. Everything right about Reckless is so closely copied from Alice Creed as to suggest that the makers of this version understand the original well enough to know exactly why they shouldn’t have remade it in the first place. It’s not that this remake is terrible, it’s that it’s incredibly baffling why this redundant remake even existed in the first place.
The fact of the matter is simply this: The Disappearance of Alice Creed did not need to be remade, and if you had made Alice Creed as well as it was, why bother doing it all again? It’s annoying, inexcusable and there’s absolutely no reason for it. Alice Creed was a perfectly stripped-down, three-handed thriller that was shot almost entirely on a single-location set, and even though it was tough and uncomfortable at times, it had a solidly smart script, incredibly strong performances, made the most of its limited resources, and reaped the benefits of fat-free filmmaking. When remaking a film, you have to do something that is both surprising and special in order to have the remake justified, but in the case of this, it isn’t justified at all. It just ends becoming pointless to watch, lacking the bite Alice Creed definitely had, and ends up being oddly toothless, reminding you just how fantastic the original was when it came out back in 2010.
In the end, Reckless is once again another classic example of a pointlessly redundant remake of a great film that didn’t need to be remade in the first place, and leaves you wondering why the hell it was remade shot-for-shot in the first place. Plus, if you are one of those people who loved The Disappearance of Alice Creed when it came out, that’s great, but if you are even remotely interested in seeing the remake, then why?
INFO: RECKLESS (BLOEDLINK) / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: JORAM LURSEN / SCREENPLAY: FRANK KETELAAR / STARRING: TYGO GERNANDT, MARWAN KENZARI, SARAH CHRONIS / RELEASE DATES: TBC
Expected Rating: 7 out of 10
Actual Rating:
