After watching 2 movies back to back on Wednesday and Thursday, I noticed that there was another movie which had actually played in theaters since last week but I have not seen it. At first my wife and I were doubtful whether we should see the film or not, considering that it did not seem to garner a lot of attention. Furthermore, I was having a lot of meetings on Friday and was not sure if I could make it to the 7 PM show. But when it became clear I would be able to leave the office at 5.30 PM, and since I really wanted to have some stress relief entertainment, I requested my wife's help to buy the tickets. So off we go to see this film in Lotte Avenue.
Brief Story Line
A CIA desk agent named Alice Racine (Noomi Rapace - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Prometheus etc) was content with her current work in London, identifying possible terrorists cell/people from the surrounding environment. During her work, she was also liaising with an MI5 British Intelligent agent named Emily Knowles (Toni Collette - Hitchcock, xXx: Return of Xander Cage etc) who was also very supportive of Alice. Using her cover, Alice also managed to turn Amjad (Tosin Cole) from an ordinary taxi driver to an asset.
Before she worked as desk officer, Alice was actually a pretty good CIA interrogator who after one incident few years earlier, made a radical decision to transfer from the field. Her direct superior at that time was Eric Lasch (Michael Douglas - Wall Street, Fatal Attraction, Ant-Man and many more) whom Alice still keep good contact.
Meanwhile a messenger for an alleged terrorist was caught by CIA agents based in London. Bob Hunter (John Malkovich - Being John Malkovich, RED etc) as the CIA head instructed his team to ask Alice back into the field to interrogate the messenger and find out more information. Alice had no choice but to return to action and perform what she did best.
From that moment on, Alice would be caught in the various web of deception and she had to use all her intelligence, brain and experience to uncover the planned terror attack in the city of London, with the assistance from an unlikely ally Jack Alcott (Orlando Bloom - Lord of the Rings trilogy, first 3 series of Pirates of the Carribbean and so on). What would happen next? You can see it for yourself to find out.
End of Brief Story Line
To tell you the truth, I did not know anything about this movie. I had neither seen the trailer nor read the synopsis to it. So you could imagine my surprise when we were given twist after twist through out the whole movie. My wife and I were pretty surprised of the first twist and we were kept on guessing till the very end (Although some twists were easier to guess than others), but nevertheless we were quite entertained.
The main story itself was a bit stereotype about terrorists plotting to do some horrifying attack and must be stopped at all costs. But the interesting part was actually those surprising twists. In addition, the fighting and gun shooting scenes were surprisingly good. The sound effects particularly during the guns blazing were cool and added the element of suspense. One more thing that I liked about this movie was the fact that they really used real-time method like in 24 TV series starring Kiefer Sutherland.
This may not be an instant classic crime thriller movie, but I personally felt that this one was not too bad. In fact it was pretty enjoyable and it even had some brief funny moments. The movie also had some interesting large cast of well known stars with John Malkovich whom I dubbed as the star performer despite having limited screen time. Orlando Bloom sadly looked old in this movie (totally unlike his performances as Legolas that made him became a ladies' favorite). While Noomi Rapace started to build her own rapport as lead star of thriller/action movies.
Now if you are a fan of a crime thriller movie with multiple twists through out the movie, combined with brief action sequences every now and then, you should give this one a try and see it for yourself. But if you are not a fan of such genre, or if you prefer a very intelligent crime thriller drama, then perhaps this would not really satisfy you. One thing that you need to take note is the film only playing in Cinema 21 chain in Indonesia. So if you would like to see this one before it disappeared in the couple of weeks time, you need to hurry to see it.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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