The scummy story is porous, obscured and weak. The best scenes are those with Olga Kurylenko, who saves this movie with a few exceptional performances and her beauty. She is however, the only stand out. The ham fisted direction alienates the viewer. Harvey Keitel performance was also not satisfying. I particularly disliked his extreme close ups. Without Olga, this would barely rate worth watching. She elevates an otherwise very poor overall experience to something worth your time. Another major irritation is the too frequent Italian voice overs with no subtitles, which irritated me greatly. I really can't recommend this movie, except to those who adore Olga.

I had not heard about this 2023 action thriller titled "Paradox Effect" from director Scott Weintrob prior to sitting down here in 2024 to watch it. But I figured that I would give it a go, since the cover looked interesting enough, and the movie had Harvey Keitel on the cast list.

Samuel Bartlett, Ferdinando Dell'Omo and Andrea Iervolino wrote a script and storyline that started out okay, but then fell into a slump about halfway through and never recovered. The movie trotted on in a monotonous pacing without really going anywhere. And it felt like I was sitting through a long sequence of filler to make the movie run for 87 minutes. There wasn't much story progression to the narrative in general, and that made sitting through "Paradox Effect" rather tedious and boring actually.

And you don't really care much about the characters in the movie either, as the character gallery is flaccid and one-dimensional.

While Harvey Keitel is on the movie's cover, he is but a name to lure in the audience, as he is not in the movie all that much. I am not particularly much a fan of Olga Kurylenko, but she actually carried the movie well enough, make it a bit more bearable to sit through the monotonous narrative.

I found "Paradox Effect" to be a disappointing movie, and it is definitely not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time. There are far better action thrillers out there, but if you enjoy the genre perhaps give director Scott Weintrob's 2024 movie a chance.

Sitting through the 87 minutes was a bit of a test, as there wasn't all that much story progression, and without much of anything overly interesting happening, it just wasn't anything to write home about.

My rating of "Paradox Effect" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

The plot is very run of the mill. There are no real surprises, just one twist (which you see coming a mile away). Ex-junkie starts out as meek, afraid, begging for her life and incapable. But as soon as her daughter is threatened, she becomes a SWAT-level weapons expert, taking down criminals in hand-to-hand combat and dropping bad guys left and right.

The male lead is equally one-dimensional and unbelievable: interpol cop who took down a crime boss is now being extorted to commit crimes and is suddenly willing to commit multiple murders and threaten the lives of every single person he encounters throughout the movie.

And Keitel's character is a horribly stereotypical crime boss who sits around sucking down cigars and whiskey while "philosophically" musing nonsensical about life choices.

The writing and acting is bad to mediocre throughout. But worst of all: it's just boring and pretentious. Rating is clearly manipulated with all the fake "10" votes that had this movie at a whopping 7.8 which is how I was tricked into watching it. And already down to 6.1 after I watched it even before my vote of 3. Predicting it will drop off a cliff before long.