The Foreigner - Blu-ray

Film: Fate can be so cruel sometimes: A terrorist attack in London causes businessman Quan (Jackie Chan) to lose his beloved daughter. Now the former Vietcong fighter is out for revenge. Desperate to discover the identity of the Irish assassins, Quan turns to British government official Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan), a former purged IRA member. But apart from empty promises, the traumatized Quan gets no help from the government. And so he decides to take matters into his own hands and elicit the information he needs from Hennessy in a different way.

The Foreigner is a tense revenge thriller with a gripping story and some excellent action sequences. Although the film was a big hit in China and did quite well in the US, Bond director Martin Campbell's flick is only being released in this country for home viewing. The story told here may not be particularly original. But the way it is realized makes the whole thing very rousing and worth seeing. It starts with the two lead actors who deliver truly surprising performances here.

Jackie Chan is absolutely convincing as an avenging angel broken by grief. Of course, he gets to show off his fighting skills and deliver great stunts. But they come across as much rougher and less over the top than you're used to seeing from him. This makes especially the duels Quan has with his opponents extremely effective. Pierce Brosnan is also convincing, as he shows that he can do more than just play the charming sympathizer. As a shady, ice-cold calculating politician, he delivers one of the most interesting portrayals we've seen from him in recent years.

The flashbacks interspersed here and there of Quan's time as a Viet Cong fighter experiencing the horrors of war, which are meant to show how he acquired his particular fighting skills, are the film's only slight spoiler, as this kind of explanation is really unnecessary. The audience learns enough about the man as the film progresses that these flashbacks don't really add to the story. Furthermore, the desperate man's quest for revenge is so thrilling that there any form of subplot just unnecessarily disrupts the narrative flow, which is good in itself.

That's just complaining on a high level, though. Because all in all, Martin Campbell has staged a mixture of revenge and political thriller that is successful on a dramaturgical, acting and visual level, which provides the perfect fodder for a thrilling and thoroughly entertaining home cinema evening. Absolutely worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The technical realization of the Blu-Ray is on a good level. The image sharpness is fully convincing and allows even small details to come to the fore. The colour scheme looks very atmospheric due to a deliberate reduction and also the atmospheric shots of London underline the positive overall impression. The same can be said for the sound. This offers a very powerful sound carpet, especially in the action scenes, but also allows the dialogue to come coherently to the fore. Good!

Extras: As bonus material, the Blu-ray has interviews with Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan and director Martin Campbell to offer. For a total of about 30 minutes, the three talk about their roles, about working on the film and about the story. All in all, this is typical promotional material, but some interesting details are revealed in the interviews after all. A promo clip for the US release as well as trailers are also on the additional program here.

Conclusion: The Foreigner is a thrillingly staged and very well acted revenge thriller, in which not only Jackie Chan, but also Pierce Brosnan may show himself from a slightly different side. On the Blu-ray, the film convinces not only with its dramaturgical quality, but also in terms of image and sound. The extras are just typical promo material, but the interviews are still not uninteresting. Overall, there is for the thriller a very clear: Absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp