Z/Web

Author: Iris Johansen

Better in concept than in reality. The idea is cool: an unattractive woman with low self-esteem is almost murdered, and gets a new face during her recovery. She finds strength to live through desire for revenge and sets out to kill the killer. Unfortunately, the novel goes on much too long, as we must endure months of the woman’s recovery with her, and the book takes a long time to get where we know it’s going. Once we do get there the resolution is well done and satisfying, but it feels like a lot of work for minimal gain. Iris does characters well, perhaps too well in this case, for we’re faced with too much psychological damage and healing for mere entertainment.

Much better than the first film, though that’s not saying much. It’s got great action, a cool heroine, neat gadgets, and a globe-trotting plot. Unfortunately the plot’s rather fantastic (literally), and without a good grounding in reality, we don’t really care much about the end result. Yeah, the heroine wins, the bad guys dies, hooray. There’s also a rather heavy-handed attempt at instilling three-dimensional characters into the movie: the script does this by bringing in a former lover of Lara’s, which is supposed to bring all sorts of deep emotional baggage but is just off-putting and trite. Come on, folks: think James Bond. No deep characterization there. He doesn’t need it. Lara, like James, is all about style, not substance. If she does cool stuff, we’ll like her. That’s pretty much it. Fortunately this film has some style, and except for a few misses, this isn’t a bad ride at all. Good fun.