The plot: Mitch (Dylan O’Brien)’s life got turned upside
down after his fiancée was murdered in the middle of a terrorist attack. From
then on, Mitch dedicated himself to getting revenge on the terrorist cell, to
the point of getting the attention of CIA Deputy Director Kennedy (Sanaa
Lathan). She sends Mitch to train under black ops operative Stan Hurley
(Michael Keaton) and prepare for the best chance he has to get that revenge he
craves.
The cast is… ugh. This is the kind of film that seems to
actively go against my regular format because not only is the cast rather
small, it’s also only good for the more visible actors; the others barely
register anything. O’Brien still seems to be in cocky asshole mode from The Scorch Trials, but credit to him for passing as an action lead and selling the
usual bravado that entails. His one-liner delivery needs some work, but
otherwise, he’s decent.
Taylor Kitsch as an enemy agent only really gets one
scene to really show his stuff, and it’s opposite Michael Keaton; he does well
and there’s absolutely no contest. As for Keaton himself, he is once again made
of awesome and the best part of this entire production, getting across cold
efficiency and easily one of the ‘best’ torture scenes I’ve seen in a while;
the amount of pain his character goes through and he still comes across like he
could kill the torturer in ten seconds flat, the mark of a real badass.
For an action-thriller,
this only carries a baseline amount of suspense. It’s serviceable in that it
seems to know the blueprint for these types of stories, where the thrills are
made out of the fear that the lead character is going to screw up somewhere,
but that threat rarely if ever pays off. It suffers from the usual nigh-on
invincibility that tends to make for the weaker entries in the genre, which
honestly works in Keaton’s case but definitely not with our main hero. However,
just as an action flick, it’s mostly pretty decent. The action scenes
themselves are rather simple, sticking mostly to the four F’s (Fist Fights and
Fire-Fights), but the choreography for them is good and the actors are able to
sell them properly. There’s a real love for the red stuff here, with the aforementioned
torture scene being easily one of the least bloody moments in the film… as is
the opening mass shooting, but I digress; it’s gory and wince-inducing, but
just short of splatstick territory.
However, I said that these ‘mostly’ work,
and that’s because of the painfully
obvious CGI. As much as I get the need for it in this film to an extent,
the fact that it is as glaring as it is really cuts short a lot of the bigger
action scenes due to it clearly not actually happening on screen. This ends up
reaching a nadir during the climax, where the effects work not only becomes
even more conspicuous somehow but also enters the realms of just plain
ridiculous. After all these other scenes that are pretty low-flash and
grounded, the ending feels like it’s something the guys behind Fast &
Furious would have scrapped for being too ridiculous. There may be a proper
scientific explanation for how a nuclear bomb is supposed to act that way, but
it still looks goofy as shit regardless.
From Rapp’s introduction into the plot to his training with
Hurley, we get a reiteration of a point that comes up a lot in revenge thrillers: Revenge isn’t the way to go. As weird as
that sentiment is, actively going against the foundations of your own story,
it’s served as the backbone for some of the genre’s best examples like Death Sentence. However, for all this film’s talk of “don’t make it personal” and
“don’t let your emotions get the better of you”, it doesn’t walk the walk to
follow that. Hell, Hurley seems to be the only person here who even bothers
following that logic, given how operating on raw instinct is Rapp’s schtick for
the entire film. It has the same problem that Taken 2 did in how it wanted to
have its ultraviolent cake and smash it too.
Although, to be fair, it does
lead to a single nugget of a good idea and it once again involves Hurley during
the torture scene. Basically, the whole “don’t make it personal” thing gets
flipped on its head as Hurley’s interaction with Kitsch’s enemy agent not only
exposes the underlying problems with that mindset, but also allude to
real-world examples of the U.S. essentially creating its own enemies. You know,
that thing I briefly brought up in my review for American Made? But again,
single scene for it to germinate and then it gets discarded right afterwards.
This film honestly could have been salvaged by digging a bit deeper into that,
showing how people left in the rubble by the military end up striking back
against it, but honestly, I liked it more when American Made did it. Yes, the
film that bored me to the core of my being did a better job than this did; I
see this year still isn’t done surprising me.
All in all, this film feels incredibly played out. Keaton,
O’Brien and even Kitsch hold up to scrutiny, the action scenes are decent and
there’s even some traces of bigger commentary on military action and its
unintended results, but the rest of it is just a mass of blood-soaked, poorly
animated, seen-this-so-many-times-before drivel.
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