Producers: Anthony Bregman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Stefanie Azpiazu   Directors: Nat Faxon and Jim Rash   Screenplay: Jesse Armstrong, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash   Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Will Ferrell, Zach Woods, Zoë Chao, Miranda Otto, Giulio Berruti, Julian Grey, Ammon Jacob Ford and Kristofer Hivju   Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Grade:  C-

Ruben Östlund’s cool, sharp 2014 Swedish black comedy about a family’s emotional disintegration as a result of an act of cowardice in the face of an incoming avalanche at a ski resort inspired this English-language version, which misfires on virtually all cylinders; rarely has a title more accurately described a movie’s trajectory from original to misguided reworking.

In this version, Billie and Pete Stanton (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell) arrive at a posh, modernistic Alpine resort with their sons Finn (Julian Grey) and Emerson (Ammon Jacob Ford).  Their marriage seems no better than okay, and though they all hit the slopes, none of the four seem to be enjoying themselves all that much, often taking to their rooms to watch television or play video games.  The conversation between Billie and Pete seems a little strained, too. 

Things change for the worse when, in a trip to the deck of the restaurant overlooking the mountains, they hear one of the distant rumbles—controlled explosions to keep the runs right—that have punctuated their stay and watch in horror as a wave of snow comes from the mountains toward them.  Pete quickly takes action, but hardly of the heroic sort: he runs to safety into the restaurant, leaving his wife and kids at the table to fend for themselves. 

The threat subsides, but the effect of Pete’s split-second decision hovers over the rest of the vacation: Billie’s angry not only at his apparent cowardice, but at his refusal to admit what he’d done.  The division between them explodes during an evening with Pete’s work buddy Zach (Zach Woods) and his girlfriend Rosie (Zoë Chao), whom Pete’s invited to join them despite Billie’s opposition (and then lied to her about it), and leads her to distance herself from him for the rest of their stay; only her desire to help him regain a degree of stature in their sons’ eyes prevents what looks like a marital disintegration, with her sharing an afternoon with a handsome ski instructor (Giulio Berruti) and him going on a sad, drunken adventure with Zach.       

One might have expected that the makers would have taken the opportunity to transform the story into a wacky vehicle of the kind Ferrell specializes in, but such is not the case.  Though it lacks the pungency of Östlund’s film, this on-and-off remake remains basically a drama with comedic undertones, one of those movie in which Ferrell tries to stretch.  It certainly takes advantage of his general physical flabbiness and his ability to play befuddled, but his puzzled expression often seems to reflect the actor’s failure to fully inhabit the character rather than Pete’s effort to understand what’s happening and devise some way of dealing with it. As for Louis-Dreyfus, there’s not much humor at all to her intensity, though she shows a softer side toward the close, particularly in her scenes with the boys.

The family dynamic takes up most of the movie, but it’s egged on by episodes with other characters, not least those played by Woods and Chao, who are quite different from the equivalent couple in the original film but work fairly well.  A few scenes give Miranda Otto the opportunity to grab the limelight as a distinctly liberated (and bossy) resort employee—another figure from the original but more broadly drawn here, and there’s a funny sequence in which Pete and Billie, at her insistence, confront the manager of the place (Kristofer Hivju) over the avalanche scare—another instance in which Pete proves the wuss. 

Overall, though, these seem like digressions intended to camouflage the fact that as rewritten (removing, for example, the original’s closing bus sequence), this is a fairly flimsy script, with concerns about gender identities that are never coherently addressed.  Even with a relatively large number of skiing footage, “Downhill” clocks in at under ninety minutes, and at that, as edited by Pamela Martin and Dave Rennie, it feels overlong and rather flaccid.  It does look good, though, with cinematographer Danny Cohen obviously relishing the locations and Dave Warren’s production design.

Ultimately, though, this is a dramedy about emotional discomfort that will probably cause most viewers to feel uncomfortable themselves. And it’s one of the weirdest Valentine’s Day releases imaginable.     

Incidentally, there’s a bit of history to be found in “Downhill.”  It’s the first Searchlight film to be released since Disney struck “Fox” from the name.  But at least they retain the old Fox fanfare at the start; it would be sad to lose that.

Producers: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli   Director: Reed Morano   Screenplay: Mark Burnell   Cast: Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Raza Jaffrey, Max Casella, Richard Brake, Geoff Bell, Daniel Mays, David Duggan, Shane Whisker, Elly Curtis, Nasser Memarzia, Amira Ghazalla and Tawfeek Barhom   Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Grade: C-

It’s admirable for anyone to want to make an espionage-based action film that differs from the usual sleek fare in the genre, featuring some hero who can apparently overcome any obstacle with superhuman aplomb.  It’s especially so when one of the major producing entities is the one that has overseen the James Bond franchise that set the template so many others have, to one extent or another, tried to emulate.  And the fact that the protagonist is female makes it all the more remarkable.

A pity that the end result is so disappointing.  “The Rhythm Section”—a poor title that, though explained at one point, remains pretty opaque—turns out to be a low-rent Le Carré rip-off that’s the very antithesis of a crowd-pleaser.  Not that it’s trying to make anybody feel good; it’s far too dark and depressing for that.

One can’t blame the movie’s problems on a lack of fidelity to its source material.  The script is by Mark Burnell, the author of the novel (one of  series) on which it’s based.  (The title is his, too.)  Presumably the plot weaknesses are present in the book, too, but they’re probably more obvious on the screen than they were on the page.

After a brief prologue in Tangier, where we see Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively) preparing to shoot a man (Richard Brake) sitting in a chair, the film flashes back to a time some months earlier , when she was a bedraggled homeless person hooked on drugs and occasionally making money as a prostitute.  Lively certainly throws herself into the part without reservation: you might think that she’d wandered in from a Sadfie brothers movie. 

The reason for her dissipation is quickly made clear.  He entire family died in a plane crash that she had declined to take with them, and she’s overwhelmed with grief and remorse.  But she assumes that the crash was an accident—the official explanation—until approached by Keith Proctor (Raza Jaffrey), a freelance reporter who’s been investigating it at the instance of  rich businessman Suleman Kaif (Nasser Memarzia) and his wife Alia (Amira Ghazalla).  He tells Stephanie that the plane was brought down by a bomb planted by a terrorist named Reza (Tawfeek Barhom), who—for reasons not explained—the authorities have neglected to arrest. 

Stephanie determines to kill him, but can’t go through with it.  After Proctor is killed, though, she seeks out his source—and finds him absurdly easily, with just the Scottish equivalent on a zip code to go by.  (It helps that his seems to be the only house for miles.)  He’s an ex MI6 agent named Ian Boyd (Jude Law), who after some grumpy reluctance gets her clean, toughens her up through trials like swimming in an ice-cold loch, and trains her in the brutal techniques of killing. 

Boyd then assigns her the identity of a dead assassin called Petra Reuter, and sends her to Marseille to meet a notorious dealer in information, Marc Serra (Sterling K. Brown), who gets her a lucrative gig to kill sleazy businessman Leon Giler (Max Casella) and then gives her the locations of Lehmans (Brake), who was involved in the downing of the plane, and Reza so that she can take them out.

What would be amusing about all this—if Burnell and director Reed Morano allowed even a whiff of humor to intrude into their grim, ultra-serious treatment, is not only that Stephanie is, until the twisty ending, being used by virtually everyone, but that in actuality she’s not terribly good at the murder business, largely because her conscience keeps getting in the way.  Her failure to shoot Reza when she has the chance early on gives him the opportunity to do more damage; her reluctance to gut Giler puts everything in jeopardy; and when she dithers in shooting Lehmans, it gives him the chance to turn the tables.

To be sure, that allows Morano to stage some visceral action sequences, most notably the fight with Lehmans (which Patrick survives only by dumb luck) along with an ensuing car chase (which, once again, ends in near-disaster), and an attempting bombing of a bus.  All, however, are so skittishly shot by Sean Bobbitt and edited by Joan Sobel that they amount to visual assaults.  There’s also an aural assault in terms of the decision to use several pop tunes to comment on the action at various points—an oddly out-of-place idea that’s simply grating. 

It must be said that through it all, Lively gives her all, which is considerable.  She looks genuinely distressed from beginning to end, even when donning wigs and glitzy clothes as disguises, and handles the role’s physical demands impressively.  Law does the dour, world-weary bit with grim efficiency, and Brown brings smoothness to the unflappable Serra.  The rest of the cast fulfill their responsibilities more than adequately, with Jaffrey and Barhom the standouts; Casella, however, overdoes the sleaze (and frankly the exteriors for that sequence don’t appear to have actually been shot in New York City, where it’s ostensibly set).

Burnell’s book was followed by three other Stephanie Patrick novels, and presumably it’s hoped that “The Rhythm Section” will inaugurate a Jason Bourne-like series.  But despite Lively’s committed performance, the unrelieved grimness and cynicism of this initial installment make it unlikely to spawn a franchise.