Everybody Has A Plan - DVD Review

'The subtle ticks between the two broadly different brothers are perfectly captured by Mortensen, who remains one of our best screen presences.'

Speaking fluent Spanish, Viggo Mortensen plays identical twins in this quasi-Hitchcockian Argentinian Drama that has a few more coincidences than sense would normally allow. Undergoing a rather dramatic mid-life crisis, well-to-do doctor Agustin (Mortensen) spots an opportunity to step into the shoes of home-town dwelling brother Pedro (also Mortensen) and takes it, leaving wife Claudia (Soledad Villamil) very much in the confused lurch. Things get more complicated as Agustin begins to realise that Pedro was involved in his own murky plots, with threatening locals ready to close in.

Mortensen, who spends most of his time as Agustin, playing Pedro, is terrific and is well supported for the second half by Sofía Gala as Rosa. The subtle ticks between the two broadly different brothers are perfectly captured by the actor, who remains one of our best screen presences. It's testament to his skill that he can crop up in this sort of muted international offering, as well as front something much more mainstream.

Whilst Mortensen seems committed, the story occasionally does not. There's extremely little reasoning given to Agustin's dramatic break from the every day; references to a small amount of money to be gained and his fracturing mental state do not cut the mustard when the actions and consequences are this severe.

Meanwhile, director Ana Piterbarg, who wrote the script with Ana Cohan, introduces but never commits to a Freudian subtext, which sees Agustin running away from Claudia just as the two are meant to be adopting a baby and then later getting romantically involved with the much younger Rosa, whose nickname is 'baby'. It's broad strokes stuff and, to work properly, it needed much more detail.

If I had have seen Everybody Has A Plan in the middle of a festival, I may have been tempted to like it more. It's a solid Thriller, with good ideas and the huge bonus of Viggo Mortensen in the lead. But its plot is also spectacularly muddy, its characters ill-motivated and its script occasionally drawn in clichés.

By Sam Turner. Sam is editor of Film Intel, and can usually be found behind a keyboard with a cup of tea. He likes entertaining films and dislikes the other kind. He's on Google+, Twitter and several places even he doesn't yet know about.