2008’s comic book adaptation Largo Winch: Deadly Revenge gets a sequel in the form of jet setting thriller The Burma Conspiracy which sees both director Jérôme Salle and star Tomer Sisly revisit the story of the billionaire heir.
After the death of his adoptive father and consequently now CEO of the multibillion corporation The W Group, Largo Winch (Tomer Sisly) makes a decision that shocks the world, to sell the company and use the money to fund a new humanitarian foundation. But on the same day as he signs the papers over, he and his company are accused of crimes against humanity by international prosecutor Diane Francken (Sharon Stone). It seems his father funded a massacre in Burma headed by evil General Kyaw Min (Nirut Sirichanya) shortly after Largo had lived there for a period of time. Now suspect of orchestrating the brutal murders he must quickly find out the truth and clear his name.
The Burma Conspiracy really tries, and wrongly thinks that it has an edgy and hard hitting thriller story to tell but unfortunately those presumptions are unfounded leading me to think that if a film can suffer delusions of grandeur then this one is a prime example. The thing is, it’s not that the plot is that over complicated it just gets so dull at times that at no point does it have your full attention. Therefore, with you drifting in and out of the story you sometimes get a tad confused by the ever changing environment and timeline jumping. The scenes themselves are actually well shot and have a decent flow, but only as a single entity, the problem comes when they edit those scenes together to form the narrative that it begins feels stodgy and loses any consistent flow built up in each scene.
Oh yeah, and then you’ve got the action sequences which even though well staged, and like the rest of the movie visually pleasing, feel like they belong in a completely different movie. It’s like the director thought the film needed an injection of pace and a few thrills and instead of building up tension through character and story they just threw in a few explosions and gun fights. And this isn’t even including the ridiculous fight been Largo and a bad guy as they free fall after jumping out of a plane. It really is slap your forehead in disbelief cinema.
Tomer Sisly delivers an OK performance as Largo, the fact that English is not his first language doesn’t help him but it’s a struggle I think he manages to keep on top of. But then there’s Sharon Stone who redefines ‘Phoning it in’, actually to be honest it’s more like she ‘Faxed it in’ and didn’t even have the courtesy of using good ink. She slugs through her lines with about as much gusto as one would muster brushing their teeth. And she’s not even so bad that it’s funny to watch because she doesn’t get any scenery chewing material to begin with.
The DVD release itself, with only a trailer attached as a ‘special feature’ makes it’s very tough to recommend The Burma Conspiracy at all, there’s no doubt potential there behind the camera, but is it just in the mould of a French Michael Bay who would rather film explosions and roaring action than an engaging story? I’m not sure quite yet but I’ll keep a keen eye of Salle to see where his career takes him.
The Burma Conspiracy is available on DVD everywhere now.
