Film review: Everybody Has a Plan - This film, starring Viggo Mortenson, is stronger on atmosphere than plot

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Viggo Mortensen in Everybody Has A Plan

Ana Piterbarg's sombre identity thriller is mostly notable for a fine double performance (in Spanish) by Viggo Mortensen.

He plays Agustin, a depressed doctor in middle-class Buenos Aires who gets a chance to escape his life when his estranged twin Pedro (also Mortensen) shows up out of the blue, dying from cancer. Agustin heads for his brother's riverside shack deep in the Argentine Tigre Delta, hardly suspecting he's headed straight into an unsolved murder case.

But will his imposture also fool the young woman (Sofia Gala Castigilione) who once knew Pedro? Mortensen, who was born in New York but grew up in Venezuela and Argentina, convincingly portrays the brothers – both laconic, lean, haunted, yet sufficiently divided as to lend their relationship a buried poignancy.

The film, perhaps modelling itself on Antonioni's The Passenger, is stronger on atmosphere than plot, though committed support work from Castiglione and Villamil (The Secret in their Eyes) as Agustin's wife keep the attention tightly focused.