CIA operative James Silva leads a small but lethal paramilitary team on an urgent and dangerous mission. They must transport a foreign intelligence asset from an American embassy in Southeast Asia to an airfield for extraction -- a distance of 22 miles. Silva and the soldiers soon find themselves in a race against time as the city's military, police and street gangs close in to reclaim the asset.
I was not surprised to see Mark Wahlberg in yet another agency/assasin thriller, but the film definitely threw up a few surprises, including Ronda Rousey and many twists throughout the storyline of the film. This role is where Mark belongs, so I should have expected to have seen him, although seeing the film was a last minute decision for me... The film didn't really produce a new series of themes or plot types that we haven't seen before, but what it did do well was to thrill the audience, and it sure did that a lot - but was the film one to go on the Wahl of fame or was it all thrills and spills? Here are my thoughts.
I'll start with what I liked about this film. Possibly one of my favourite elements of this film was the cinematography, I absolutely loved the vast array of pan camera shots, switches between human and computer vision and even to a UAV plane to give the audience a real grasp of the location and perspectives of all of the different characters and things in the shots. I feel that this really helped to immerse the audience into the story line, the characters and plot because every time we were switched through the perspectives it genuinely felt as if we were with the CIA agents on the ground which definitely added some thrills to the film! It also really helped to introduce the characters nicely. Admittedly, we were introduced to them a little slowly but it was really creative and exciting how we did eventually meet them. Through a variety of dialogue, camera angles and scenes in the plot, we were gradually introduced to the characters through seeing them in the action and witnessing how they reacted to the different scenarios and situations that they were put into. This method of introduction just generally allowed us to get a better idea of who they were and made them seem a bit more personal, especially as we got to see first hand the relationships that they had with each other and how they changed from work to in the field. It also really helped that the characters in the film are really interesting, they all had unique characteristics that made them stand out and all of them just seemed to feel really genuine and interesting. Most importantly though, they had a real sense of purpose, we definitely had expectations change when we saw specific characters and I liked how the film was able to communicate these moods through to us.
The technology and equipment that was available to the characters was amazing, not only did the shots of the planes in the air and their cameras look amazing but they were great for the story too, as they gave a really clear indication of what was happening at what time. But for an action film to be successful, it must have one key thing. Action! This film had so much action and excitement right throughout it, from gun fights to actual fights they were all here and they were really exciting and engaging to witness. Throughout them all, the film was able to use tense music and awesome dialogue to really help portray the characters emotions and sense of emergency really well into the audience to essentially put us in that situation. These character switches just really made the whole film more entertaining and it was really cool and engaging to see the different things through a variety of different characters perspectives. But most importantly, the switches between characters and the variety of different action scenes really helped to grip the audience and not let go easily, these fighting and shootout scenes were easily the most fun and engaging parts of the film for sure. But it wasn't all 'shoot 'em up' for these scenes, the film was able to capture the element of emotion really nicely in this film, by using a combination of sadness and excitement to really make some heart to heart and death scenes really powerful and impacting, whereas portraying the characters as nasty when in a shootout with the enemy. This variety of different emotional connections was really nice and just added a nice element of change into the film to ensure that it wasn't just a full on action / thriller film. The plot ties into this very nicely though, admittedly the plot took some time to get going but once it did it was really good, there were plenty of great lines of dialogue, camera angles and just general scenes throughout that made the plot not only easy to follow and understand, but also enjoyable. A great way in which the film did this was through a constant interview with the main character - James Silva, that was really conveniently timed to describe what had happened, and seemed to flip the whole film over into more of a recollection or memory that he was describing. But the plot was fairly easy to grasp and was really supported by the constantly evolving and adapting characters who really helped the film to live up to it's action genre title. For example, I liked the changes between the mother figure's home life as a mother and work life. At the beginning she was portrayed as a unstable mother who was severely stressed, but as the story developed she seemed to take control more until at the end where surprisingly she was killed in a plane hijacking. Seeing characters develop like this to really give a sense of a strong personality and wanting to change was awesome and helped us to feel connected to the characters. These types of plot twists and changes were great, not only did they keep the audience on our toes but it just helped to keep the plot interesting and fun to watch, and they were definitely unexpected, well I found them surprising anyways!
No film is perfect though, and this film has its fair share of issues. I'll start with my main issue with the film, it was really difficult to understand what was actually going on most of the time, we as an audience were dropped into the story line with the other characters with no real context or introduction as to what we were a part of. This confusing beginning to the film had a long lasting negative impact on the film, I definitely found myself asking lots of questions and getting confused such as "why that happened", or "who is that character?" which really interrupted the flow and genuinely left the film seeming a bit unprofessional and poorly put together really. I also didn't feel as if many of the characters were fully or well introduced to us at all, we had a good idea of who the characters were yes, but for some lower level characters, some of them I hadn't seen before came into the film mid way through and this just left me completely baffled and confused.
The plot wasn't straightforward at all, many things happened without us knowing and the film definitely relied on the audience being entertained and persuaded by the intense action scenes. There were many times where I just couldn't understand what was actually going on in the film. Personally, it didn't feel as if the main part of the film was really stamped into the film either, it seemed like more of a side job, rather than a main task that required very high members of the army. The urgency that was spoken of just didn't seem to be portrayed to us very well. Not only was the plot difficult to understand but it was also difficult to keep up with and maintain, the plot moved far too quickly and this made it really difficult for us to keep up with what was going on, purely because it felt like some well needed explanations were omitted from the film. The plot really did confused me and I think the execution of it let the whole film down.
Overall, I would give this film a 7. It had some amazing visuals, it entertained and it provided all of the action and violence that you could possibly want from an action film but it just didn't feel as if much thought had gone into making the film easy to understand and keep up with at all which is definitely a shame. I found myself asking far too many questions throughout the film and I really didn't appreciate being 'dropped' into the deep end with no context at all. I'm not really sure if I should recommend this film really, if you have an unlimited card then it's worth a watch for the entertainment value but don't expect a complex or complicated plot. If you don't have an unlimited card then I would probably give this film a miss, considering how confusing and lazy that it feels this film is.
Thank you for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Thanks for all of your support and I hope you have an awesome day!
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