PASSION

Christine (Rachel McAdams) is young, beautiful and a high riser of advertising company Koch Image International. She manages a branch, and under her tutelage is aspiring underling Isabelle (Noomi Rapace).

In front of her very eyes, Christine steals Isabelle's latest idea while enjoying a video conference call with their big boss JJ (Dominic Raacke). He's sufficiently impressed to invite her to the hallowed head office in New York. Ooh, Isabelle isn't too happy about that.

But in the meantime, Isabelle is fucking British beau Dirk (Paul Anderson) behind Christine's back. Christine seems so power-hungry and ambitious that she's barely likely to notice. Only she does, and is quick to humiliate Isabelle with video evidence of her betrayal.

She's also not shy of playing video footage of Isabelle having a breakdown in a car park, in front of an entire party of fellow colleagues.

Feeling suitably beleaguered, Isabelle eventually decides to make changes to the latest advertising scheme - contacting JJ directly with her ideas in a bid to cut Christine out of the loop. Suddenly JJ wants Isabelle to move to head office, and not Christine - and poor Dirk doesn't know which horse to back any more.

Not one to lose a contest without a savage fight, Christine does however have a few more nasty tricks up her sleeve. Isabelle had better watch herself, as suddenly her only ally appears to be her faithful assistant Dani (Caroline Herfurth). But, really, how far can you trust anyone in the corporate world of advertising?

She soon finds out when all of this back-stabbing and conniving against one another results in murder, setting into motion an investigation of endless twists and turns...

Brian De Palma's latest harks back to his erotic thrillers of the early 1980s, in particular DRESSED TO KILL. All the familiar traits are here: misdirection, double-crosses, twist after twist storytelling, split-screens...

And yet, this all feels superficial and never truly gets going. Perhaps it's because, visually, it slots somewhere between TV afternoon film and glossy early 90s thrillers such as DISCLOSURE. The whole thing looks rather dated and glam.

Then we have the script and performances, which between them ensure that there's no-one worth rooting for. Isabelle appears to be the underdog but Rapace, although quite good here, doesn't have the charisma to elicit the required amount of audience support. McAdams is woefully miscast as the ruthless career bitch; Anderson is fucking terrible as the ambiguous love interest/rat. Truly, he undermines every scene he's in.

Playing safe with its sexual politics despite the careful inclusion of infidelity and lesbianism, PASSION - a remake of the French thriller LOVE CRIME - takes a tired filmmaker and runs him lazily through old tricks and styles. Its silly plot, increasingly devious and tit-for-tat nasty as it becomes, should be guiltily enjoyable. Instead it's trite, as is Pino Donaggio's overdone score.

Metrodome's UK DVD shows how far removed modern day De Palma is from the respect he commanded in the 70s, 80s and even early-to-mid 90s.

The film itself is presented uncut in anamorphic widescreen. It's watchable, despite the edge enhancement. Colours are vivid, blacks are stable - it's not a great modern transfer, but it's okay.

English audio comes in both 2.0 and 5.1 options. Both are clean and consistent, but the latter is preferred due to its intelligent channel balancing.

An animated main menu page leads to a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the film via 12 chapters.

There isn't a single bonus feature to support the main feature. All we get on this disc are trailers upon start-up for MISS MALA, the MANIAC remake and LOVELY MOLLY.

PASSION isn't a bad film. The problem is, it's not very good either. Brian De Palma seems to be having fun revisiting old themes and filmic styles, but he does so with lesser material and a depleted sense of purpose here.

Review by Stuart Willis