I’ve never really understood how Michelle Monaghan got to be in movies, let alone get a star role – let alone headline an actual entire film. It’s not that she’s a bad actress, it’s just she’s – how to say this nicely? – entirely underwhelming. And wet. That sort of came out wrong: it’s just that she’s projects a very strange, prudishly sexless notion of womanhood. Perhaps that’s why Penthouse North works, sort of?
In it she plays a war photographer (hah) made sightless in a blast, who’s now recuperating in a swish penthouse apartment owned by her handsome new boyfriend. But who is this new man in her life really, and what does she know about him? Does she know he’s a jewel thief or that some very bad men want their stuff back? Does she, doesn’t she? That’s the thing. Anyway, it’s not going to be the breakout movie of 2013 or anything, but it does what it does. Penthouse North is set in Manhattan but it filmed in Ottawa.