No, not the Michael Caine classic. Orlando Bloom bulks up, slaps on a few tats and adopts an accent to play a South African cop in this middling post-apartheid thriller directed by Jérôme Salle. Bloom co-stars with Forest Whitaker as a baggage-laden duo investigating the violent murder of a white woman with possible connections to a new synthetic drug that’s hit Cape Town.
There’s tension aplenty, a score by über-composer Alexandre Desplat and some cool SA locations but an abundance of cop clichés ensure this procedural never gets above the hackneyed. Sadly Bloom’s muscles make you think more Popeye than Popeye Doyle.
