This 2017 American thriller is directed by Michael Apted and stars Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Michael Douglas, John Malkovich and Toni Collette.
CIA agent Alice Racine (Rapace) lives and works as a caseworker in London. When her old CIA mentor Eric Lasch (Douglas) contacts her, she is soon forced to get back into active service.
London has been targeted for a terrorist biological weapon attack, and Alice is closing in on the suspects when her sources become compromised and she is targeted by those she trusted who want the attack to take place.
Fleeing from her superiors and not knowing who to trust, she puts her faith in a contact of Eric’s - Jack (Bloom), a former marine who takes her side in hunting down the terrorist threat whilst staying alive to discover who is behind the CIA leak...
This is a very sub-par film to review, as it was a very sub-par film to watch, and so there isn’t much I can say about something we have seen so many times before, in probably more entertaining ways.
Noomi Rapace dishes out the action when she has to, but other than that, her character Alice is devoid of character development and personality - she’s a cardboard cut out of the CIA agent forced to flee from the traitors trying to kill her. She doesn’t need to act much when she can let her pistols talk for her.
Support comes from Orlando Bloom as a brilliantly unconvincing ex-Marine who has a taste for violence, John Malkovich as a sour faced CIA agent and Michael Douglas, who probably has most fun out of the lot, and gets stuck into quite a bit of the action. The cast is decent enough, but there’s nothing here for them to really get stuck into.
It’s a film you can pass off as a Liam Neeson effort, or a Jason Statham straight to DVD purchase. Based in London and fresher than ever in light of recent events, we spend the final hour chasing down the terrorists planning to attack the city with a deadly biological weapon.
Cue lots of fast edits, brutal hand-to-hand fights that rip off your Bourne and Bond (former 007 director Apted knows what he’s doing), and lots of running and shooting to full the time in where you may or may not have guessed who is the bad guy...guys...and who is good from the start. There are so many little twists in this, you soon give up taking anything for face value and just wait for the next betrayal or brutal death.
The soundtrack is standard pulse-racing stuff, and there is a decent balance between the talking and shooting - even though there’s not much else to this other than trying to find out who is the bad guy and who they work for and why.
It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and in parts it does entertain for a brainless 90mins. Maybe not worth cinema admission, but if you’re bored on weekend night you can stick this on for a by the numbers thriller that ticks all the boxes, just not in a very slick or fresh way.
CIA agent Alice Racine (Rapace) lives and works as a caseworker in London. When her old CIA mentor Eric Lasch (Douglas) contacts her, she is soon forced to get back into active service.
London has been targeted for a terrorist biological weapon attack, and Alice is closing in on the suspects when her sources become compromised and she is targeted by those she trusted who want the attack to take place.
Fleeing from her superiors and not knowing who to trust, she puts her faith in a contact of Eric’s - Jack (Bloom), a former marine who takes her side in hunting down the terrorist threat whilst staying alive to discover who is behind the CIA leak...
This is a very sub-par film to review, as it was a very sub-par film to watch, and so there isn’t much I can say about something we have seen so many times before, in probably more entertaining ways.
Noomi Rapace dishes out the action when she has to, but other than that, her character Alice is devoid of character development and personality - she’s a cardboard cut out of the CIA agent forced to flee from the traitors trying to kill her. She doesn’t need to act much when she can let her pistols talk for her.
Support comes from Orlando Bloom as a brilliantly unconvincing ex-Marine who has a taste for violence, John Malkovich as a sour faced CIA agent and Michael Douglas, who probably has most fun out of the lot, and gets stuck into quite a bit of the action. The cast is decent enough, but there’s nothing here for them to really get stuck into.
It’s a film you can pass off as a Liam Neeson effort, or a Jason Statham straight to DVD purchase. Based in London and fresher than ever in light of recent events, we spend the final hour chasing down the terrorists planning to attack the city with a deadly biological weapon.
Cue lots of fast edits, brutal hand-to-hand fights that rip off your Bourne and Bond (former 007 director Apted knows what he’s doing), and lots of running and shooting to full the time in where you may or may not have guessed who is the bad guy...guys...and who is good from the start. There are so many little twists in this, you soon give up taking anything for face value and just wait for the next betrayal or brutal death.
The soundtrack is standard pulse-racing stuff, and there is a decent balance between the talking and shooting - even though there’s not much else to this other than trying to find out who is the bad guy and who they work for and why.
It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and in parts it does entertain for a brainless 90mins. Maybe not worth cinema admission, but if you’re bored on weekend night you can stick this on for a by the numbers thriller that ticks all the boxes, just not in a very slick or fresh way.
