Review by Ben Bussey
Will the young women of this world never learn? If you need to get away from it all, don’t go to Paris. The only way you’ll get out of it okay is if your dad’s Liam Neeson. Otherwise, your plans of happy-go-lucky frolicking in the so-called city of love will promptly give way to a hideous nightmare of pain, terror and bloodshed. Unfortunately, no one ever said this to Sophie (Karine Vanasse). Bored, lonely and out of work in Montreal, she takes the advice of a new friend and checks out Switch.com, a site that offers customers the chance to temporarily swap homes with other users for holiday purposes. What could possibly go wrong there, right…?
Well, evidently Sophie was also never told the cardinal rule about never trusting anyone or anything which involves interacting with strangers online, as soon enough she’s jetting across to Paris and setting up a temporary base of operations in a luxurious flat in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Next thing she knows, the police are smashing through her door, clapping her in irons and carting her away for the murder of the decapitated man in the spare room. Her arresting officer is Detective Damien Forgeat (Eric Cantona), and as far as he and everyone else making the investigation are concerned, Sophie is not Sophie; she’s Bénédicte Serteaux, the owner of the apartment who has presumably taken Sophie’s place in Montreal. Unable to prove her innocence or her true identity, Sophie does what all suspects must in order to make it a real thriller; she busts loose, goes on the run and sets out to clear her name.
As should be evident from that synopsis, the star of the show here is very much Pan Am actress Karine Vanasse’s female fugitive, but as she’s considerably less famous here in the UK than former football player Eric Cantona, he takes centre stage in the extremely prosaic and misleading cover art, suggesting he’s about to join fellow ex-footballer Vinnie Jones in the realm of straight-to-DVD action film. However, while Cantona may be famed for his flying ninja kick skills (even someone as apathetic about football as I am remembers that incident), Switch is certainly not an all-kicking, all-punching, guns-and-ammo brawler. Instead, it’s one of those slow-burn Euro mystery thrillers which have grown ever more popular since those books and films about that girl with some tattoo or other who kicks hornet’s nests whilst playing with fire or something. Indeed, despite having an original screenplay, you’d be forgiven for thinking Switch was based on another of those airport novels. It’s got the requisite twisty-turny plot, location hopping action, and plentiful scenes of cops solemnly pacing back and forth talking over the evidence.
There’s a curious tone to these modern thrillers, inasmuch as they’re eager to be all dark and edgy, yet at the same time inoffensive enough to appeal to a mass audience; they’re trying to be all things to all people, essentially. Switch very much follows suit. It’s a bit contemporary and high-tech, tapping into very modern anxieties about identity theft and the abuse of personal information online. It’s also a little bit creepy, with the obvious psychological issues of the enigmatic villainess. Even so, it never gets complex or nasty enough to alienate the grannies in the audience. For instance, while the finale involves a bit of binding, gagging and torture, it feels less reminiscent of the Saw movies than of vintage gothic melodrama; really, it wouldn’t have felt out of place if Karine Vanasse had wound up tied to a railroad track. On top of which, it’s got just enough simple B-movie pleasures to keep us perpetual adolescents interested, including some utterly gratuitous but very welcome nudity from the leading lady, and a couple of decent action scenes, in particular a very Point Break-esque back gardens and alleys chase sequence; just about all that’s missing is Cantona firing his gun in the air and going “ARRGHHH!”
As you’ve probably gathered, there’s nothing in any way ground-breaking about Switch. It’s very much a by-the-numbers mystery with a plot that gets progressively sillier and characters that never get beyond two dimensions. Even so, there’s nothing wrong with it as an undemanding evening’s entertainment. It’s one of those films you’ll most likely forget all about once the credits roll, but for the preceding ninety minutes or so it’s a reasonable diversion. In other words, this is one to get you through a plane journey or a rainy Wednesday night when there’s nothing else on TV.
Switch is available now on Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray from Anchor Bay Home Entertainment (with English subtitles, unlike the trailer below).