The Paradox Effect, the review of the film with Harvey Keitel

Who knows what must have prompted it? Harvey Keitel to say yes. This doubt could be resolved without saying a word, by throwing the wallet on the table or rubbing the fingers together mimicking the most classic gesture indicating money. But could this really be the reason? A purely economic question? The need to work? After seeing The Paradox Effect directed by Scott Weintrob, doubts do not subside, on the contrary. They arise continuously, they start to come to the theater during the screening of the film and continue on the road that leads home, to keep us company, there’s just the disappointment, the one you feel when you see a master actor involved in a project that has neither head nor tail. To tell the truth, there were many clues as to what it could be like, in fact it would have been enough to say out loud your plans for the evening to understand how strange they sounded: “I’m going to the cinema to see a thriller with Harvey Keitel set in Bari”, or we could have changed our minds by watching the trailer, in which a sinister off-screen radio hostas Accorsi in Radio arrow or the slightly more trashy one Three meters above the sky, tells the story of the capital of Puglia as a sort of Gotham City for us all. But the problem is not Keitel, nor the wonderful Bari, which would have deserved a better film, probably whoever took part or any other city hosted The Paradox Effectwould have been part of a terrible film.

Let’s proceed in order. The plot is one of the most classic of an American action film.. Karina (Olga Kurylenko) is a former drug addict mother who finds herself involved in a drug deal for which a Interpol policeman (Oliver Trevena) kidnaps her and forces her to collaborate with him. Both will find themselves having to face Silvio (Harvey Keitel), a local crime boss who kidnapped both of his sons. Put like that, it even seems like the story makes sense, actually. the script is full of holes, the scenes follow one another without any logical thread and as the minutes pass one hopes that the end will come quickly to save us. Usually films like this compensate for the banality of the dialogues with gunfights and blood, but here there is not even that. Except for the last 15 minutes, we witness an interminable exchange of clichés, and Keitel appears only for a few scenes – this is a good thing (and it would be nice to know his fee) -, while at Olga Kurylenko has the thankless task of acting throughout the filmgoes from working in a fruit and vegetable shop to the machine gun, all seasoned with a series of pained grimaces that more or less mirror those of those present in the roomBari is barely visible, most of the shots were taken at night and in the dark it could seem like any other city. In short, a catastrophe.