REVIEW: ‘Ferry’ Shows When Revenge Gets Complicated

Ferry is a crime drama Netflix Original starring Frank Lammers. Ferry (Lammers) is an enforcer for a mob boss in Amsterdam named Brink. When one of Brink’s businesses gets robbed, with his son being shot in the process, Ferry must hunt down and kill the perpetrators. But as his hunt takes him back to the region he grew up in things get complicated. Reconnecting with family and getting to know some of the locales quickly add problems to Ferry’s situation.

Ferry sets up a familiar premise and adds a couple of well-implemented wrinkles to it. When we first meet Ferry he is living what he would describe as a good life. He wants for nothing, spends his nights in bars and strip clubs as he sits at the right hand of one of the power players of Amsterdam. And all he has to do to maintain this way of life is to rough up, shakedown, or occasionally kill whoever his boss tells him to.

When his boss’s son is shot, and Ferry is sent out to hunt down the shooters, it is just another job. At least till it isn’t, and Ferry must make some hard choices and reevaluate his situation. This need for reevaluation comes from his interactions with two people. His sister Claudia, and a woman named Danielle. Since the job takes Ferry back to the region he grew up in he decides to make a stop at his sister’s. Her husband used to run in similar circles as him when they were young and perhaps he can help. When Ferry arrives, he finds things are not going great. His sister is suffering from a brain tumor and isn’t expected to live long. He was unaware of this development since they haven’t spoken in many years. As he tries to complete his task for Brink, this situation is constantly in the background as he struggles with how to bury a multi-year old grudge while dealing with the dangerous elements of his work.

Ferry’s search for the shooters leads him to a campground community. There, while observing the home of one of the suspected shooters, he notices a woman coming and going from the house. It turns out this woman, whose name is Danielle, is the cleaner. He quickly befriends her as a means of learning more about the habits of his target.

Between the stress of his work, and his struggle to reconcile himself with his sister before she dies, Ferry soon finds himself stumbling into Danielle, and a relationship soon begins to bloom. However, Danielle has no clue what he does, and his desire to keep her out of that aspect of his life comes to further complicate matters.

From fairly early on you can see where Ferry is taking its lead. As he tries to complete his assigned task, those around him start to get caught up in his work, forcing him to make some hard choices about what he wants, and what he is willing to sacrifice. The movie does a good job of presenting Ferry’s struggle as it progresses, and did deliver a strong plot twist near the end that I didn’t see coming.

The acting overall is delivered with a competent, if not award-winning quality. I had little trouble believing in the characters and the story they were telling. Lammers does a good job carrying the film for the most part. His portrayal of Ferry manages to impart the character’s struggles to the audience, without becoming overly emotional. The production overall does an excellent job of selling the world the story takes place in. The low-income areas much of the story is set in feels genuine. It doesn’t shy away from the reality of the setting as it strives for its authenticity.

When all is said and done, Ferry delivers a solidly executed story that provides a bit of twist near the end, but otherwise, does little anyone who has watched similar movies hasn’t seen before.

Ferry is streaming now on Netflix.