It was one of those very rare time that I decided to see a movie on a Monday night. This movie premiered in Indonesian theaters last Friday, but as my wife and I were having other plans and also we went for our weekly staycation during the weekend, we did not have the time to see it until last night. I was a bit doubtful earlier whether to see the movie or not, seeing that it had no schedule playing in US theaters yet. But as I remembered seeing the trailer once or twice earlier, and I thought why not? It seemed like a nice enough action movie. So what was the movie all about? Let us find out more.
Brief Story Line
Movie was told in the year 1995 during the Yugoslav wars where a group of peace troops were assigned by NATO to be based in Sarajevo and consisted of armies from different countries. A US Navy SEAL team of 5 people with their leader Matt Barnes (Sullivan Stapleton - Blindspot TV series, 300: Rise of an Empire etc), his 2nd in command Stanton (Charlie Bewley - Bachelor Games) and the rest J.P (Dimitri Leonidas - The Monuments Men), Duffy (Diarmaid Murtagh) and the mathematical "genius" (Joshua Henry) were deployed to the conflict area to do a simple supposedly silent assignment but managed to leave the location in a bang. This resulted their boss the General (J.K Simmons - The Accountant, Patriots Day, Spider-man trilogy etc) very upset and suspended the team.
During this suspension time, they found out from a lady named Lara (Sylvia Hoeks) who had information about possible gold bars from the World War 2 period, hidden in a place she only knew. After gathering some intel and doing rough calculation, they found out that the gold bars were worth about USD 300 million. But they were located in the enemy's territory and the weight of 27 tons definitely a challenge since they were buried under the water. Things got complicated when the Serb armies were also chasing after Matt's team after their earlier mission.
With time running out, could Matt, Stanton and the rest be able to pull out their most daring "mission" to attempt at gathering those gold while resisting the chase from the Serb armies? Find them all in this fun enough action thriller movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well, I got to say that the movie was a little bit different from what I expected. If you had seen the trailer, you will got the sense that it was going to be a movie full of action. However, it turned out that the actions were quite a lot in the beginning and some in the climax. In between there were not so many of action sequence. Instead, the movie seemed to be focusing on the methods and ways to bring out the "treasure". It's probably my own fault for hoping the movie would be full of war action scenes, when it was shown in the trailer that it was also about a heist.
Aside from different expectation, the movie itself was actually quite OK. The underwater sequence was quite nice. It was obvious that they director Steven Quale (previous works included Into the Storm and Final Destination 5) and his team put a lot of effort on those scenes. The earlier action sequence was pretty mind blowing, but alas, most of them were already shown in the trailer as well. I personally think the trailer gave too much glimpses of the movie. But the story was quite nice, and it also provided some funny moments.
My most favorite character in the movie strangely enough was not the Navy SEAL team but the lovable General, played very nicely by J.K Simmons. He had an outstanding presence and his characterization of a hard core General with the appreciation of his team and his good decision making was very lifelike. It actually reminded me of his character of the tough Peter Parker's boss in the Spider-man trilogy (the original one back in early 2000 with Tobey Maguire). Most of the fun moments in the movie were when he was on screen. I also think the special effects were OK, but the sound effects not really (not sure why the bullets blazing and explosion sounds were like kept in minimum and it did not give the Wow effect).
Overall this was a fun movie but should not be expected as a summer blockbuster movie as it was not produced in Hollywood with big budget. I think the producer did not expect this to be a commercial success either which was why they have not determined when or whether it would play in the US theaters despite having the movie finished since 2016. Bear in mind that this movie was a French-German production so most likely it would be more successful playing in European theaters. For those of you who would like to see a war action movie emphasis on a "heist", this one should be a good option. But for those of you preferring to see a full action war movie, better watch something else. The choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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