London Film Festival 2012 – day six: Everybody Has a Plan

Wednesday 17^th October, 8:30pm – Odeon West End 2

Sunday 21^st October, 4pm – Screen On The Green

Everybody may well have a plan, but these plans are barely thought through opportunistic schemes. A botched kidnapping and casual murder is a plan, of sorts.

Viggo Mortenson plays estranged identical twins living contrasting lives. Agustín is a successful married paediatrician living in a smart flat in the city, about to adopt a baby with his wife. Pedro still lives where the twins grew up, a small unforgiving island community where everyone knows each other and keeps each other down.

Agustín’s life has already shown itself to be a charade when his brother turns up. Pedro has cancer and wants his twin to finish him off. It’s like killing yourself. Agustín takes over Pedro’s life, initially to retrieve a pay-off hidden by his twin, but then lingers, and becomes more involved in shady deals that get darker and shady people who notice he is behaving oddly.

 

Mortenson is watchable and enigmatic, and gets to play two complex characters whose motives we cannot fathom. This part of Argentina is cold, damp and oppressive. It’s a dangerous game to hide in plain sight, and we always know that violence will beget violence.

Verdict: ••••

Eleanor MacFarlane

 

Read more reviews from the 56^th London Film Festival here.

Watch the trailer for Everyone Has a Plan here: