A Sacrifice ★½

AS DEPENDABLE an actor as Eric Bana is, he also hasn’t been averse to making a couple of stinkers.

Originally an Australian television comedian, he came to Hollywood’s notice in 2000’s Chopper, his second feature film, with a brilliantly raw portrayal of a notorious Australian criminal and self-confessed murderer.

Since then, Bana has been working steadily across all genres with his best including Black Hawk Down, Munich, Hanna, Deliver us from Evil and The Dry.

His worst is probably 2016’s The Secret Scripture, but the 2024 psychological thriller A Sacrifice isn’t far behind.

This is one of those films that looks like it was made in a relative hurry due to having a limited budget, perhaps spent mostly on getting Bana to sign on the dotted line.

But the main problems are the script, which makes little sense particularly in terms of character motivations, and the performances including Bana who seems to be sleepwalking through most of it.

From the outset there may be a clue in the fact the story is based on a novel titled ‘Tokyo’ but set in Berlin.

In writing this review I couldn’t be bothered checking into that aspect further because, frankly, I’m not interested in spending a lot of time on films that I’m not going to recommend.

Bana plays Ben Monroe, an American ‘social psychologist’ (whatever that is) working in Berlin who is visited by his estranged daughter.

The daughter, played by Sadie Sink, best known from TV’s Stranger Things, gets caught up in a relationship with a teenager who is under the thrall of a charismatic cult leader.

I use the term ‘charismatic’ loosely because from the outset this cult leader may as well have ‘Beware of me’ tattooed on her forehead.

The only performance that comes out of the confusing and unrealistic proceedings intact is the one given by Sink, mainly because she is actually called on to emote a couple of times.

Watched on Prime