It was a rather slow week in the Indonesian cinemas and the only new movie seemed worthwhile to see was this film that premiered on Wednesday. As I had to go visit my friend whose father just passed away on that day, my wife and I went to see this one only yesterday. Despite choosing the time of 7.15 PM, I think my wife was a bit worried if she could not make it as she had an event earlier, so she decided to use different mode of transportation and ended up reaching home very fast. I myself reached home a little while after her and we were able to be in theater before the movie started. Anyway, we shall go on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
After having a life changing experience, Mitch Rapp (Dylan O'Brien - The Maze Runner, Deepwater Horizon, Teen Wolf TV series etc) decided to try infiltrating a terrorist cell and kill its leader who had ruined his life. Based on his wit and several useful abilities such as martial arts, weaponry and language fluency, he was recruited by a CIA deputy director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan - The Best Man, Now You See Me 2 etc) to be a special ops agent. He was being trained by a very tough veteran and experienced former agent named Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton - Tim Burton's Batman, Beetlejuice, Spider-man: Homecoming and many more). He would be trained with other potential agents that include the more experienced person named Victor (Scott Adkins) who thought that Mitch was reckless, cocky and dangerous for the team.
Meanwhile, some 15 kg of plutonium were stolen and the CIA believed that it was going to be used for an attack on an unknown target. The stolen plutonium made it to a mysterious character nicknamed "Ghost" (Taylor Kitsch - John Carter, X-Men Origins: Wolverine etc) who wanted to sell it to the potential buyer. The CIA deployed Hurley, Mitch and Victor to a location where the plutonium would likely be. They would be accompanied by a Turkish agent who had been there for 5 years named Annika (Shiva Negar).
So could Hurley's team be able to stop the attack? Could Mitch be a good and reliable agent despite being so reckless and endangering the other team member? And who was Ghost that seemed to be few steps ahead of Hurley? Find them all in this action thriller movie.
End of Brief Story Line
This movie was a rather standard spy terrorist movie. It started with a Bang, but then the pace slowed down a bit then it felt more like a rather flat thriller with occasional actions sequence here and there till the climax. The slower pace of the movie actually was a let down coz the trailer suggest a full action movie with high intensity, but it turned out that the movie fall rather short of expectation. The action sequence though, was actually pretty good. Dylan O'Brien managed to give the fighting scenes a very good performance (It seemed he prepared himself very well on this and I think experience of playing in The Maze Runner series certainly helped). Michael Keaton as usual always gave his all in his performance. His character was very convincing in this film.
As I mentioned above, it was a rather standard movie whereby the story was about a man with very bad experience and enlisted to help the CIA to fight terrorism. It was adapted from a novel of the same title written by the late Vince Flynn who wrote a series of novels revolving around Mitch Rapp. This was the first of the novel series with the introduction of the character. I am not sure though whether the producer was thinking of spawning sequels based on this character. However, looking at the movie itself, I have my doubts whether it would be commercially successful enough to raise their appetite.
The movie did have some interesting action sequence and I think the climax scene was pretty awesome. I think my wife shared the same view with me that those scenes were quite breathtaking and intense. The fighting scenes were also quite brutal and the killing scenes (especially the one involving a car in a sewer) were very violent and not suitable for kids. The sound effects were awesome, the special effects of the explosions were good considering the movie did not have a very large budget. Oh I also mentioned that the movie felt rather flat, which was probably due to very minimal scene that was fun to see (apart from brief scenes involving Michael Keaton in the end).
So if you are looking for an action thriller movie of agents fighting terrorism and save the world from nuclear attack, then this one should be interesting enough. And if you are a fan of Vince Flynn's work specifically Mitch Rapp's character, maybe you can try and see how he is portrayed in a movie. But if you are looking for a similar type of movie with lots and lots of actions full of mind blowing fighting, explosions sequences, then perhaps this would be a bit soft for you. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment