Plot: Whilst running a successful gaming business, a woman is tracking down the masked criminal who raped her in her own house.

A new Paul Verhoeven film these days is quite a rare treat. I like a lot of his previous work. While his stint with sci-fi's in the 80's with RoboCop and Total Recall were highly enjoyable. It's his erotic thriller that I think bring the best out of him. He seems to have a fetish of making the audience feel uncomfortable by showing content on screen that would be deemed politically incorrect, bold, daring, and controversial.

You could also call him an equal opportunities director as he seems to create a fair amount of strong female leads. A bit like what James Cameron does. Great examples are Sharon Stone and Carice Von Houten in Basic Instinct and Black Book. Also to a lesser extent, you could say the same for Showgirls and Elizabeth Berkley.

From the opening scene, you can instantly feel Verhoeven's prints all over it and that you are in for quite a ride. The whole story is unpredictable, and yet it remains exciting, tense and somehow hilarious.
The reason I say it's funny at times, is the use of black comedy. It always amazes me how you can make fun of a dark subject. Verhoeven and his writing team manage to do this quite often during the film, and the performances execute the comedy so well.

Speaking of the performances. Not only are they great, but my goodness are there some dysfunctional characters in this. Isabelle Huppert is brilliant at being the tough stone-cold-***** character. She has a strong screen presence for every minute she's there. Her decisions are not what you would call predictable and what any mild mannered person would do, and yet you can still get invested with her. Whether you are unsure about the film, I think you can firmly agree that Huppert's performance is mesmerizing and is well deserving of her Oscar nomination. If her role was done by someone else, then this would have been a much different viewing experience.
There are lots of contributions from the supporting cast. Laurent Lafitte fits the tone of the film perfectly. Judith Magre has great chemistry with Huppert and created most of the film's laughs. Jonas Bloquet was a nice stand-out playing Elle's dufus son. His innocence gave the character a sweet quality to it despite the hilarious stupid things he says.

The only negative I feel mentioning comes from it's strength. While I think the uncertainty of it all is both thrilling and exciting, sometimes the decisions characters make fell odd and you question the tone a bit.
But thankfully, it is only a minor thing as the whole experience was really good fun. It goes places that you would not expect. But as it's Verhoeven, you should expect the unpredictability. What makes him as a great story-teller is the smart reasons he goes down these particular paths in such an extreme way. Huppert is nothing short of fantastic. She carries the film so well and is one of the strongest bad-*** female characters I have seen for some time.

It is smart, challenging and has beautiful performances. What I liked about it the most, is that you can see the film in many different ways. You can see it as a black comedy, a look at social satire or just another one of Verhoeven's erotic thriller, but with a much darker and more disturbing tone. What was also great about it, is the open ending. It still leaves a small amount to be unresolved. So that means it can be a great film to talk about afterwards.

Rating: 8/10