Brief Story Line
Mason Pettits (John Cena - Hidden Strike, Peacemaker TV series etc) was former Special Forces who tried a freelance gig from his old army buddy Sebastian Earle (Christian Slater - We Can Be Heroes, Hard Rain etc) by providing security to journalist Claire Wellington (Alison Brie - The Rental, GLOW TV series etc).
Claire was supposed to do an interview on dictator president Venegas (Juan Pablo Raba - The Marksman, Narcos TV series etc) in the country Paldonia. However, when a military coup happened, they had to find ways to survive.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Like I said, I was interested in this film because it looked like fun, especially since it starred John Cena who had been playing in plenty of action and comedies in the past years. So I did not hesitate to choose this movie as the first one to see when we have the chance. We went to a studio that was said to show it with Dolby Atmos system, but to my surprise it was the usual Dolby sound system. Fortunately though the sound effect was still amazing and I was satisfied by it, especially during the shooting and explosion scenes.
For an action comedy film, I thought it was pretty OK. The amount of action was sufficient enough, with the one in the beginning that surprised me due to its violence. No wonder it was rated R in the US and 17+ in Indonesia (aside from the frequent use of foul language). However the action sequence in the jungle was not too great due to the very poor quality of the bad guys (even though a lot other movies were like that as well). But I did like the climax fights where John Cena showed his ability with funny scene involving Claire and Venegas.
The casting of John Cena and Alison Brie I thought were quite spot on as they were experienced in comedic roles. But I personally thought Juan Pablo Raba was so fun to watch and looked perfect as this narcissistic dictator with annoying habit of telling self-created phrases. He also made the movie more enjoyable. Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were also support cast such as Alice Eve (Men in Black 3 etc) as Mason's wife who we thought was not that convincing, the young Molly McCann as Mason's daughter and Marton Csokas (Æon Flux etc).
This movie was directed by Pierre Morel whose prior experience included Peppermint and Taken. His opening sequence in here was unusual but interesting to see. It was written by Jacob Lentz who I thought was not bad, considering it was his feature film debut. Although there were some improvements that could be done, but he did provide something different than the standard lead characters story line and even made me guessed wrongly on a commonly done twist. Oh during the early part of the closing credits, there were few funny scenes that you could watch, but there was no post end credit scenes.
Overall, this was an action comedy movie that was purely for fun. There were few scenes that we could laugh but not the totally hilarious type. Some of the action were quite entertaining though not up to the spectacular level. And frankly I was not shocked that critics were unkind with the movie especially if they expected a well executed action perfectly combined with smart jokes and amazing story. However for audience who just want to enjoy a simple film without overthinking like us, then this was enjoyable enough.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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