Brief Story Line
Parker (Jessica Alba - L. A.'s Finest TV series, Fantastic Four etc) was a Special Forces commando who frequently went on dangerous missions across the world with other team members, including her good friend with code name Spider (Tone Bell - Bad Judge TV series etc). When Parker received news from Sheriff Jesse Swann (Mark Webber - Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World etc) about her father's demise, she returned home to take care of her personal stuff. She also met with her old friend Mike (Gabriel Basso - The Night Agent TV series etc), Jesse's brother Elvis (Jake Weary - Animal Kingdom TV series etc) who was still a jerk and his father Senator Ezekiel (Anthony Michael Hall - Halloween Kills, Weird Science etc).
Unfortunately Parker found out about something that might endanger her town and decided to take matters into her own hands.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
As you could see in the brief story line above, it has a very simple premise that did not require any major thinking, just like what I expected. And it turned out the movie was as simple as that. It was a straight forward action film with no over complication of things and nothing extraordinary. For such genre, I felt the movie did deliver with some pretty awesome action, particularly the hand to hand fighting sequence involving Parker. Got to hand it to Jessica Alba as she looked quite convincing in the action scenes especially the use of knives.
Though the action might not be too bombastic but for an action thriller, it was sufficient for me. Some of them were pretty violent (including the explicit showing of killing certain people). And the climax was quite OK, but I probably expected a bit more explosive. Now the story though was certainly not the plus point. Similar plot has been told in many other films with more impressive characters development and grittier. Meanwhile this one was probably too shallow for more critical people which would explain the poor reception by critics and audience.
The cast were generally pretty standard but the way their characters were written did not leave room to develop further. It's quite surprising considering the trio of John Bracanto (co-writer of The Game, Terminator Salvation etc), Josh Olson (A History of Violence etc) and Halley Gross (co-writer of The Last of us Season 2 etc) were experienced writers. Aside from the cast I mentioned above, there were also few support characters like Parker's late father Harry (Alejandro de Hojos), Ghost (Kaiwi Lyman -American Violence etc) and few others. The movie was directed by Indonesian director Mouly Surya whose work Marlina Si Pembunuh dalam 4 Babak was critically acclaimed. This marked her English-language movie directorial debut which at the moment did not seem like a major success. Hopefully she would get better break next time.
Overall this for me was an enjoyable enough movie. Some of the actions were entertaining and the story was not bad. For those who just want to watch action without overthinking, this would be pretty satisfying. But if you got to have amazing plot or very well written scenarios, then you might not find what you are looking for here. So if you are like me who want to see straight forward action movie with standard duration of 106 minutes (without any mid or post end credit scene), then you could give it a try. Who knows you might be pretty entertained like me.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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