Directed by Ariel Kleiman

Written by Ariel Kleiman and Sarah Cyngler

Rated MA 15+, 98 minutes

★★

Oscar Isaac pulled out of this movie just before shooting began and French star Vincent Cassel jumped into the lead role, so that may account for some of the film's shortcomings, although it's unlikely. The young Melbourne director, Ariel Kleiman was 27 when he started this first feature, after a couple of successful shorts, and the film feels like it was not ready, at any level.

Kleiman doesn't lack ambition. He shot for a week in Georgia, presumably because he wanted a sense of post-Soviet decay and dystopia. The film takes place in a dramatic, run-down city full of ugly housing blocks and wastelands. Most of the film is set inside a claustrophobic courtyard that is sealed off from this city by locked tunnels. It has a fountain in the middle made of Besser blocks, as if someone has tried to conceal the sense of incarceration.

Gregori (Cassel) has a community of women and children under his control. A prologue 11 years earlier shows him recruiting a woman from a maternity ward, where he looks for unhappy new mothers who need help. It's a cult by any other name, but Gregori is charismatic, and the many children running around the place adore him. They are too young to see the violence in his heart – all except his eldest boy, Alexander (played by Jeremy Chabriel).

Alexander is now 11. His mother Susanna (Florence Mezzara) dotes on him, as does Gregori. Whether she knows what Gregori has trained him to do is unclear. A lot of things remain that way throughout the picture. That would be OK, if the scenes were tight enough to keep us interested, but they're not. Indeed, the first half of the film meanders lifelessly, with Cassel and Mezzara giving performances that fail to add credibility. Cassel is menacing, with a coldness that convinces us of his dark heart, but there's not much to explain how he could persuade half a dozen women to bring their children into his orbit. I know this sort of thing happens – I just didn't feel that this man could command such devotion and obedience.

Kleiman and Sarah Cyngler co-wrote the script after reading about child assassins in Colombia. The film is an attempt to imagine how that kind of killer might be created by a man with a powerful personality. It fails as that, because Jeremy Chabriel is far too sweet-natured to seem credible as a boy hitman. He is the film's best asset, because the other part of the story, exploring his desire to rebel against his adopted father, has some power. He is capable of enough stillness and anger to sustain interest. If Kleiman and Cyngler had stripped everything back to focus on him as a character study, it might have worked, but you don't bring Vincent Cassel from France to play second fiddle to a kid. Cassel has a great face, but very little sincerity in this role.

Nor would you need to go to Georgia if the film was about characterisation. The internationalisation of the story never works. The accents clash, adding to the unreality. The sense of place never gels. The film has no home country, little dramatic credibility, and doubtful casting. The script never gets beyond its vague metaphors and an earnest desire to make profound observations about human nature. Those have to be earned.

@ptbyrnes