The Expatriat film

Ben Logan, un ex-agent de la CIA, travaille depuis peu en Belgique à fabriquer des systèmes de sécurité pour une compagnie privée. Un soir, alors qu'il se trouve avec sa fille adolescente Amy, il découvre les bureaux vides et la compagnie envolée. Il se retrouve alors au milieu d'un vaste complot et il doit lutter pour rester en vie et tenter de comprendre ce qui est arrivé.

Erased, also known as The Expatriate outside of the US, is a 2012 thriller film directed by Philipp Stölzl, starring Aaron Eckhart and Olga Kurylenko. The story centers on Ben Logan (Aaron Eckhart) an ex-CIA agent and Amy (Liana Liberato), his estranged daughter who are forced on the run when his employers erase all records of his existence, and mark them both for termination as part of a wide-reaching international conspiracy. It was released in the US on May 17, 2013, following its acquisition by RaDiUS-TWC, the multiplatform distribution label of The Weinstein Company. It was retitled Erased for the US market.^[2] It is a Canadian-Belgian co-production.

Rotten Tomatoes reports that 26% of 42 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review, and the average rating was 4.7/10; the consensus is: "Derivative to a fault, Erased squanders some nifty potential and its talented cast in a bland retelling of a story action fans have seen too many times before."^[4] Metacritic rated the film 34/100 based on 17 reviews.^[5] Dennis Harvey of Variety called it "a confidently engineered, propulsive piece of intelligent action cinema."^[1] Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter called it "competent but uninspired".^[6] Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times called it unoriginal and cliched.^[7] Paul Bradshaw of Total Film wrote, "Eckhart makes a decent Damon stand-in, but there’s nothing here than hasn’t been done (better) before."^[8]

The script was heavily criticised for being what many reviewers felt was "unoriginal." Michael Posner of The Globe and Mail said "Arash Amel’s plot is a hodgepodge of threadbare motifs, liberally cut and pasted from every thriller you’ve seen."^[9] Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times agreed with the sentiment, saying "We have a script, by Arash Amel, that hustles cardboard characters from one crisis to the next, pausing only to leak lines that might have been clipped from a compendium of spy movie clichés."^[10]