Brief Story Line
Maia Marten (Gal Gadot - Heart of Stone, Wonder Woman etc) was a famous attorney based in London who raised her young child Noah (Rory Wilmot) by herself. During one of her usual morning run after dropping Noah to school, she got a mysterious call from a man claiming he had kidnapped her son. The caller (Damian Lewis - Our Kind of Traitor, Billions TV series etc) demanded Maia to do a specific thing within one hour before he release Noah.
Without any chance to report to the police, Maia had no choice but to follow the caller's instructions while figuring out how to save her son.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Yes the above story line pretty much described what the movie was all about. The plot was simple and the story was fast paced focusing on the intensity of Maia running all across London to do what the kidnapper told her. Thing is, for a supposedly thrilling premise, I somehow felt it lacked punch. Not sure if it was because of the background music that did not add to the suspense or the pacing. I did however like the way they were able to make it an almost perfect real time (I checked them a bit every time the minutes were shown). There was one time jump that was smartly inserted in the middle, but afterwards the time seemed to move forward few times without clear indication until the last minutes of the deadline which returned to the real-time again.
There were few supposedly surprising twists here but they were not done so subtly, resulting to very easily guessed and unfortunately did not provide the shocking effects. There was one detail though that I missed but the rest were quite predictable. The ending was not that satisfying either as it was rather too easy. I think it could have been done differently adding another layer of suspense. These few shortcomings made the movie less entertaining than it could have been. This movie was written by Mark Gibson (The Wild, Snow Dogs etc) and directed by Kevin Macdonald who was experienced in making some documentaries and films like the highly rated The Mauritanian, The Last King of Scotland and few others. Sadly this one did fall into the category of well received as critics panned this heavily and audience did not seem to like it either.
The movie only had very few cast. Aside from Gal Gadot who tried her best and Damian Lewis whose voice somehow sounded like Ghostface from Scream movies plus Rory Wilmot in his feature film debut, only two more important characters here. There were Phoenix Di Sebastiani (Anne Boleyn mini series etc) as Tafa and the very familiar face of Alfred Enoch (Runaway mini series, The Critic etc). The movie itself only had short duration of 86 minutes including closing credits without any mid or post end credit scenes. I did see that the movie was shot in London so it was a nice feeling to see the streets from the point of view of person running. Although I am not a runner myself but my wife and I love to walk down the streets, so this was an enjoyable feat.
Overall this was a movie that I believed could have been better for a promising premise. Despite some efforts to make it interesting, but the lack of punch made this one less than impressive. Aside from the shortcomings, at least there were things that I liked in here like the real-time part and the view of London streets. So if you want to see Gal Gadot running all across London to save her son, then you are welcome to give this a try. However do not expect this to be a totally entertaining thriller full of twists kind of movie.
Mike's movie moments rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars
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