Close (2019)

Elevator Pitch: Close Protection Officer Sam Carlson (Noomi Rapace) is hired to look after teenager Zoe Tanner (Olivia Jewson), a mining company heiress until she arrives at a desert mansion owned by her stepmother. With only a few hours of her contract to go the house is attacked by mercenaries, requiring Sam to rescue Zoe. Once in a police vehicle in Casablanca Zoe, who speaks Arabic learns that they are to be sold rather than taken to safety and a fight results, Zoe shooting a policeman. They escape into the city and it is intended that they will take the ferry to Spain posing as a family with Sam’s boss, and lover. But he is killed and once more they are on the run. They are surviving but only just, their only course of action seeming to be a return to the desert mansion.

Content:  No sex or nudity, but quite a lot of smoking, sometimes of hash I think. Sam shows how efficient she is, protecting a couple of journalists from terrorists. Once hired to look after Zoe, they are almost constantly at odds until events cause Zoe to grow up. There are a number of fights and in the mansion the remote shut down systems and cameras are important, Sam showing herself to be able to think and act quickly. They stay in a grimy hotel in Casablanca. We also follow the news, seeing Zoe’s stepmother appearing as the possible sale of the company stalls due to Zoe’s apparent actions.

A View: This was a Netflix production which seems to have limited its distribution. The Roger Ebert critic liked it, but it appears not to have hit the spot for most. I’m not sure why not, the writers seem to have successfully maintained a level of violence which might be within the possible and which we could image that a really competent CPO could carry out, except for a fight in a fish tank. I tend to vote up films which engage me rather than distressing me so I have given this outing 7.5/10. Worth a view then.

Noomi Rapace is impressively courageous. Check out these movies in which she has starring roles: Unlocked, What Happened to Monday, Prometheus.