20131005: Action Review--Erased

Erased

1. Fundamentals, reception
1. Belgian live action feature length film, 2012, rated R, 100 minutes, thriller.
2. IMDB:  6.0/10.0 from 12,449 users.  Estimated budget: 12 million euros.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 27% on the meter; 36% liked it from 8,256 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.7/10.0 from 569,743 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Philippe Stoelzl.  Screenplay by: Arash Amel.
6. Starring: Aaron Eckhart as Ben Logan, Liana Liberato as Amy Logan, Olga Kurylenko as Anna Brandt, Garrick Hagon as James Halgate, Eric Godon as Maitland.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Ben Logan has a steady job doing security analysis for the Halgate Security Systems in Belgium.  After narrowly missing his daughter Amy's awards ceremony, he gives her a dessert gift which unfortunately contains peanuts.  Ben and Amy spend the night at a local hospital to deal with her allergic reaction.


2. The next day, Ben takes Amy to work, but all the employees are gone, the work machines are gone, all the business paperwork is gone.  The place is scrubbed.  Ben's bank account is gutted.  Ben's phone goes blank.  He and Amy go to the Halgate headquarters, and everyone claims not to know him.  He finds his co-workers at a local morgue.  Assassins are soon following them.


3. Amy finds some local help from her friends, which allows them time and safety to regroup.  The CIA starts putting the pieces together, and send Ben's old handler Anna to Belgium to close up the case.


4. The Halgate company was a fake, and used pieces of the CIA that it had bought to try to cover up the fact.  This included wiping out Ben's former security company.


5. Anna catches up with Ben, who has found incriminating evidence in the affair.  He had been in a kill squad, and had questioned his orders.  Anna had stood up for him, to find a way for the company not to sanction him, including the gig at the security company.


6. Amy demands a lot more truth from Ben, and gets it.  She takes off, which does not help things at all.  She's captured by an assassin.  Ben does some research, and finds out why so many people are angry at Halgate.


7. The tension rises as Ben arranges to meet the head of Halgate, Anna agrees to neutralize the situation, and Amy tries to escape.  Does Ben get his name cleared?  Do the people that Halgate did wrong get any justice?  Does Halgate get its evidence back?


8. The film was worth watching to the end.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Intrigue and assassins follow a disgraced former CIA and his daughter.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 A bit dark, sometimes grainy.


2. Sound: 8/10 Sometimes dips too low.


3. Acting: 9/10 Good performances.


4. Screenplay: 10/10 Moves right along, one of the requirements of a thriller; most questions are eventually answered.