There’s a throb of claustrophobic panic and despair in this movie; something like something any of us might feel while at a modern art exhibition and for a long, long moment unable to find the exit. Maybe the movie itself aspires to the cool, affectless chill of an unimaginably expensive piece of contemporary art.
Documentary-maker Vasilis Katsoupis makes his fiction feature debut here , working on the script with British screenwriter Ben Hopkins. Willem Dafoe stars, as athletic and ascetic as ever, playing Nemo, an art thief who is breaking into an ultra-luxurious Manhattan apartment belonging to an art-collector plutocrat, filled with all his modern pieces. (There is a mention of this man being away in Kazakhstan and one of his pieces is a red canvas with a “Z” on it.) New York City is seen from stock footage and in projections beyond the plate glass, and in fact this obvious studio-based unreality is not inappropriate.
