Arne Toonen’s arch, blithely rude “Black Out” is another of the stylish, dark Euro-dramas that have become a specialty of Music Box Films and now its new genre label, Doppelganger Releasing. The most banal but truest reduction of Toonen’s brash style is to label him a dirtier, flashier Guy Ritchie who re-situates “The Hangover” in Holland. An ex-con wakes up in an Amsterdam hotel room, the day before his wedding, a gun and a dead man beside him; gangsters are convinced he’s responsible for the disappearance of twenty kilos of cocaine. Also disappeared: a chunk of his memory of how he got into this mess. Cue: squealing tires, punches to the face, nasty violence, ax-wielding women in spike heels, with a few pungent twists partaking fully of post-Tarantinoism. With Raymond Thiry, Kim Van Kooten, Renée Fokker, Bas Keijzer and actor-director-screenwriter Alex van Warmerdam. 91m. (Ray Pride)
“Black Out” opens Friday, February 21 at the Music Box and on VOD.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” in words and images is in the works. Previews on Twitter (twitter.com/chighostsigns) as well as photography on Instagram: instagram.com/raypride.
Twitter: twitter.com/RayPride.
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