The Two Faces of January (Hossein Amini, 2014)

Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst star as a seemingly carefree American flâneur couple working their way through Mediterranean cities in 1962, meeting Oscar Isaac (of Inside Llewyn Davis fame), a young American small-time con working as a tour guide in Athens. The older man's dark past soon catches up with him, however, as seems to happen a lot to Mortensen's recent characters, and the trio have to take flight to Crete.
As with The Talented Mr. Ripley, the source is a Patricia Highsmith novel, and the parallels - rich Americans on the run from a murder scene in the Mediterranean of yesteryear etc. - are obvious. It makes good use of its locations and the cast are as dependable as you would expect from their track record. But it lacks the subtlety of the earlier film, simply because there is never any prospect that getting off scot-free is an option, nor is there a character as interesting as the utterly amoral sociopath Ripley at the core. Nevertheless, in comparison with most thrillers currently made with contemporary settings, it stands up well in terms of both tension and restraint.

6/10