Brief Story Line
JJ Collins (Elsa Pataky - Fast & Furious 6 - 8, Snakes on a Plane etc) was a captain of the US army who was just re-assigned in the interceptor station on a rig in the middle of the sea. The station was the last defense system for the US against nuclear attack.
When a group of mercenaries led by a man named Alexander (Luke Bracey - Holidate, Hacksaw Ridge etc) wanted to take over the station, JJ had no choice but to fight against them as they threaten to attack the US using 16 nuclear missiles.
So what would happen to JJ and the rest of the people in the station? You can find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
From the trailer I saw, this movie did not exactly gave the aura of high quality action type, but it did give the Die Hard vibe as it looked to be a one woman army fight against group of bad guys in confined space. However, once I started to watch it, immediately I felt it to give a strong B movie feel. It became worse when the characters were introduced as majority seemed to be inexperienced in acting. Although only two main cast here, but if the supporting cast were not convincing, it made it harder to enjoy the movie.
Luckily Luke Bracey did impress me as he was quite good in portraying the charming but ruthless villain, while Elsa Pataky felt better when she portrayed Elena Neves in those Fast & Furious movies. The only other cast who at least gave a better performance was Mayen Mehta as Corporal Shah. The rest were completely forgettable. The good thing though, the action was pretty good. They might not be spectacular kind but the fights were quite well executed. Sometimes I felt Elsa Pataky had the experience as UFC fighter. The ones where she fought the only female villain (not sure of her name) plus the really big guy were the best for me. They were better than the final fight which to me felt anti climactic. Oh I was also quite surprised that there were few rather graphic violent scenes in here.
The special effects were definitely not the highlight of this movie as the CGI were pretty obvious. And you can forget about the story as well. The writers seemed to add some drama with a little dark background story of the protagonist. But since I did not expect much anyway, I was not that disappointed by it. One thing that I did not expect though was when I saw a cameo of famous star, although if you read a bit of the synopsis of the movie by Netflix, his name was mentioned as the executive producer. Fun Fact (hint): he is the husband of Elsa Pataky.
This movie has a duration of only 98 minutes which was OK as too long would just be draggy. It also has a brief fun mid end credit scene. It was directed by Matthew Reilly in his directorial debut. Reilly was famous for writing action thriller novels and he co-wrote this movie together with the more experienced Stuart Beattie (writer of Collateral, Pirates of the Carribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl etc). It's too bad that this is not the best start of Reilly's career as could be seen by the low ratings of the movie even by audience standard.
Overall this is a movie that is a mediocre action thriller movie at best. Usually I could find solace in the actions on a poorly written action film, but even if they were not bad, they were not exceptional either. With the unconvincing acting of the support cast, made this not a memorable movie for me. So if you are still OK with this kind of quality and got nothing better to watch or just want to see one of the Avengers in an almost unrecognizable role, then you can give it a try.
Mike's movie moments rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
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