Dennis Harvey Film CriticSticking to the thriller genre that’s been his stomping ground on both the big and small screen, Stephan Rick’s second English-language film “The Good Neighbor” is a remake of his 2011 German-language debut feature of the same title.
The setting has changed (to Latvia, presumably for financing reasons), but the story remains largely untouched. Now Luke Kleintank and Jonathan Rhys Meyers play new acquaintances whose shared complicity in an accidental death creates increasingly unsavory conflict.Competent performances and a slick veneer make this revamp go down easily enough.
Still, one wishes Rick had placed more emphasis on Hitchcockian suspense, rather than trusting the slow-moving tale will hold us via plot and character complexities that really aren’t particularly evident.
American journalist David (Kleintank of the series “FBI: International” and “Man in the High Castle”) has accepted a job with the “European Press Network” in Riga in the wake of a bad relationship breakup.
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