Which
mining company would you expect to act more ethically, the one based in Morocco
or the cronied-up firm from Beijing? It should be a no-brainer, but the Paris
Hilton-esque heir to the Hassine mining empire is not helping much. Generally
speaking, it is bad for the corporate image when the principal shareholder is
accused of killing a cop. Rather awkwardly, it happens to be true in the case
of Zoe Tanner. Granted, she was acting in self-defense, but she might not live
long enough to tell her side of the story. Fortunately, she has a pesky bodyguard
in Vicky Jewson’s Netflix original movie, Close
(trailer
here),
which starts streaming this Friday.
Sam
Carlson never loses a client, even when they are obnoxious brats like Tanner. She
just inherited a controlling interest in the Hassine company, much to her
step-mother’s shock. It is particularly galling for Rima Hassine, because her
family built up the mining concern in the first place. She just might have to
do something about that.
For
Carlson, it is supposed to be an uneventful one-week temp gig, but she suddenly
must foil a kidnapping attempt during her final night at the Hassine Casbah.
Alas, they fall out of the frying pan and into the fire when a group of corrupt
cops tries to finish the job. Tanner really makes a mess of things when she
kills one of them, thereby making her a fugitive from justice and a major PR
problem for the Hassine company, right at a time when it is competing with a
Chinese firm for a major deal in Zambia. Spurned by her stepmother, the heiress
can only trust Carlson, who continues her protection duties, out of professional
pride and her own maternal guilt.
Somehow,
Noomi Rapace has become the queen of mediocre Netflix original films, following
up the mildly entertaining Bright and
the ho-hum What Happened to Monday? with
the competent but unremarkable Close.
At least, she shows some of the grit and action chops that brought her
international stardom in the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but most of the time, she looks like she is on
auto-pilot (and why shouldn’t she be?).
Easily
the most interesting elements of Close are
the character of Rima Hassine and Indira Varma performance as the aforementioned.
Both are more complex than the Cinderella Stepmother viewers are initially
set-up to expect. On the other hand, the entitled Zoe Tanner and Sophie Nélisse
portrayal of said are like fingernails on a blackboard. Rather problematically,
very little effort is made to distinguish the various thugs, assassins, and crooked
coppers who densely populate the film.
Reportedly,
Close was based on the experiences of
real-life bodyguard Jacquie Davis, but we can only hope she is not as humorless
and downbeat as Carlson. Presumably, the title is a reference to keeping close
to the client, or maybe the old “keep your friends close, but your enemies
closer” saying. The Moroccan locations are quite cinematic, but it is more
likely to become background television than a film anyone will be compelled to
give their rapt attention. Regardless, Close
starts streaming this Friday (1/18) on Netflix and nobody should feel any
urgency over that fact.
