Film: Verso
Release date: 27th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 100 mins
Director: Xavier Ruiz
Starring: Laurent Lucas, Chloe Coulloud, Carlos Leal, Nicole Max, Julie Nicolet
Genre: Crime/Thriller
Studio: Scanbox
Format: DVD
Country: Switzerland/Luxembourg/Belgium
Xavier Ruiz's 2009 police thriller Verso arrives on DVD courtesy of Scanbox Entertainment in an effort to show that the 'peace capital' of Switzerland is anything but; where a hotbed of vice and sleaze act as the backdrop for revenge.
The story focuses on elite Geneva SWAT team member Alex Decker (Laurent Lucas), the aftermath of his divorce from former wife Clara (Nicole Max) and his attempts at regaining the affections of his estranged teenage daughter Lou (Chloé Coulloud). This is complicated, not only by Decker's married-to-the-job modus operandi – much to the dismay of his current girlfriend – but by the release of former SWAT member and Alex's best friend Victor (Carlos Leal) from prison.
A bit of a wild man back in the day, Victor - now free but relieved of duty - is soon back to his old tricks and firmly entrenches himself in the drug fuelled and prostitute garnished criminal underbelly of the city. Things take a turn towards the personal when Victor starts romantically seeing Decker's ex-wife, rekindling some unfinished business between the two men, as it was Decker who put Victor behind bars years ago for murder...
It's clear from the start that Verso is hell bent on dirtying up Switzerland's clean world image as evidenced in the film's opening volley of crime and vice themed statistics: seven hijackings in twenty years; one prostitute for every thirty inhabitants; one gun for every two citizens… You'd think that the streets of Geneva were literally clogged with whores and drugs, however, this doesn't stop Verso from being a rather routine and uninteresting cop movie.
It's all pretty business as usual; a seasoned professional spends all his time out in the field, leaving his home life to drift into social oblivion. His attempts to make amends for past neglect continually fall flat as circumstance and the job escalate to the point where estranged loved ones are sucked into danger only for the father/husband to redeem himself by saving their lives and solving the case. Verso sticks to this formula for the most part with the occasional detour into less chartered, but still underwhelming territory.
A confused and unfocused first act bows out to slightly more interesting and better developed second that confirms that the film won't be living up to the explosions and carnage depicted on its box art. In fact, despite a couple of SWAT team raids on drug labs and organised gangs, Verso offers almost nothing in terms of action set-pieces, rendering the film's packaging and marketing somewhat of a lie. Instead, the film opts to take a more psychological route, as Alex becomes more and more paranoid over Victor wanting revenge for past events but also has his own demons to contend with. Sadly, while the results are just about watchable, the film fails to take the more interesting developments of the second act to fuel what could've been a nail-biting and taut finale.
Another problem lies in Laurent Lucas' lacklustre and unengaging lead performance; displaying all the emotional range of a downtrodden face painted onto the side of an egg. Leal's portrayal of Victor is more successful but that's partly due to his character being more intriguing overall. Alex's angsty daughter Lou is agitating to watch; accusing her mother of being a whore for trying on some lipstick in a cosmetics store minutes after offering sexual favours to a drug dealer to pay for a score for herself and a friend.
If Verso has achieved anything in terms of updating Switzerland's quaint and peace loving image into that of a cultural and crime-ridden cesspit, it’s that the film successfully depicts almost everyone as sex-crazed scum. Two of Lou's friends decide to go at it in their inexplicably trendy drug-den hangout as Lou sits on the other end of the sofa trying to finish the film that they had started watching whilst Victor has a penchant for battering prostitutes (they are sub-human after all - in this film at least). Another baffling moment sees a guy called Steph – one of Lou's friends – drop trou in front of her face in a hope that she'll naturally get the message. She doesn't, and in a later scene, he tries to rape her. Verso seems to be operating within the misguided formula of: sexual violence = edgy and interesting cinema. This couldn't be further from the truth, and the results feel very self-conscious and a little juvenile (there's even a scene when Decker – the supposed hero of the story – forces himself on his own girlfriend).
If the film exceeds anywhere, it’s in the cinematography which, on the whole, is confident and stylish. Ruiz introduces the first police raid in tantalising fashion; a long, shallow focus shot of abstract nature featuring moving figures that approach the lens. They come into focus and reveal themselves as the SWAT team getting into position. Ruiz also condones further interesting visual flourishes during some fleeting cerebral sequences that worms the audience inside Alex's psyche as faded memories of a past tragedy take on a new lease of life. There's enough panache here to suggest that Ruiz and his crew are capable of better things if they had a stronger, more original script to work with.
Verso is a film that simultaneously feels like it’s trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Its confident visual presentation and attempts at intriguing character dynamics shown from both sides of the law - in a similar fashion to something like Michael Mann's Heat (1995) - are sabotaged by lazy performances, an uninspiring script, and an altogether tactless depiction of Switzerland's darker side. Had Ruiz's directing not been so heavy-handed and blatant, this could've been decent. Instead, we're left with something that's irksome and quite unremarkable. MP
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