Alice,
in all her infinite wisdom, goes to meet with Edgar instead of
hopping the first tram out of Belgrade. Good to see Kurylenko is
still playing complete idiots, because Peter told her that Alexa was
a world class assassin. The same assassin who saw her meeting with
Edgar at the diner, but I'm sure she wouldn't, you know, BE FOLLOWING
HIM OR ANYTHING. Edgar takes her back to his hotel where Alexa pops
out and kills him. Oh gee, what are the odds? Alice runs, but we
can't see what happens next because this film was edited by someone
with extreme ADHD, so we go back to David who is going through
Pierce's CIA file.
He
discovered Natalia wasn't just Peter's lover, but was also the mother
of his daughter. Oh snap! Well, it's been a minute already, better
see what Hanley's doing. Pierce pistol whips his way into the
shipping yard the CIA is holding him at, confronting him over why he
lied about Natalia wanting him to rescue her. Hanley says Natalia
had been acting strangely the last few months of her assignment, so
the CIA planned to take her out. He figured sending Peter was the
only way to save her life, because he really wanted her information
about Mira witnessing the bombing. Hanley tries to say Federov
masterminded the whole thing, but Peter knows better and asks who in
the CIA was behind it.
Dramatic
cut to Weinstein in his office for a quick scene of nothing, so back
to Peter and Hanley. Bloody hell, I never thought I could get a
seizure from just watching people sitting around talking, but here
you go. These five second scenes are making Attack of the
Clones look like a Brian De
Palma film. Hanley tells Peter more about Mira's background, which
JUST HAPPENS to be a verbatim match for things Alice told Peter about
herself earlier. Oh ho, outsmarting Brosnan in his own film! Point
Alice! Now that we've brought her up, it's her turn for Scene #6:024
of this movie. We see she somehow managed to escape Alexa and has
gone to Denisov for help.
Shockingly,
we stay with her for the next scene, where she has now transformed
herself back into Mika from Hitman
with a short cut wig and black dress so tiny it looks like it'd
explode if she moved too fast. She goes to the hotel Federov is
staying at to confront him, because she's REALLY smart if you haven't
picked up on that yet. Peter calls her to let her know she's onto
her, but she hangs up on him. Federov's guards stop her and search
for the the prerequisite “all guards are leering perverts” scene,
that let her in Federov's suite. He is very happy to see his “gift”
from Denisov, getting into bed while Alice goes in the bathroom to
wash up. She quietly breaks a mirror and grabs a shard, all while
having flashbacks of Federov raping her back in Chechnya. Alright,
I'm ready to see him get his throat torn open, let's do this!
She
fucks it up though by chickening out, Federov nailing his Complete
Bastard status by mocking her about their shared past while holding
the shard to his throat. He's able to get the drop on her, but
before things can get worse Peter shoots his way into the room and
stops him. He has Alice, err Mira I guess, take out her cell phone
so he can record Federov ratting out Weinstein. Federov won't
though, as he is unflinching even in the face of death. Peter pulls
out a revolver he took off the body of one of the guards, emptying it
of all but one bullet. Sweet, a game of Russian roulette! Although
since we're in Russia, I guess it's just roulette.
Federov
endures two rounds of the game before he finally cracks and says the
CIA agent who bombed the building wasn't Weinstein, but Hanley. Ah,
PLOT TWIST! So Hanley wasn't trying to save Natalia, he was trying
to kill her before she could spill the beans to Weinstein, knowing
Peter would get the job done. He couldn't risk that Weinstein would
kill her before she told him about Mira, so this is a classic case of
hedging one's bets. Peter and Al- Mira leave, just in time to walk
into a shootout with David and some redshirt CIA agents. Peter mows
through them like the faceless nobodies they are, ending up fighting
David hand-to-hand in the hotel's basement. The battle is freaking
AWESOME, Donaldson goes out of his way to make sure you can FEEL
every stomach turning blow. Even better, he keeps it all in frame so
you can actually tell what's going on.
After
choking out David with a hose and smashing his head into a pipe,
Peter gives him Mira's cell phone and leaves. David watches the
video and rushes off to take it to Weinstein... only Hanley is now
sitting at his desk. Well, fuck. It seems the CIA is much more
interested in having control of the fucking PRESIDENT of Russia than
the violently immoral methods of one of its agents, so Hanley is now
running the show and Weinstein is back in the States. BIG SHOCK
THERE, I just wonder how much of a raise Hanley got? Peter, hiding
in a hotel with Mira, calls his daughter Lucy to check on her at the
boarding school she's currently staying at. Hanley answers the
phone, because he really, REALLY wants to die in this movie. Now
full on evil jackass, he sets up a deal: Lucy for Mira.
Peter
tries to send Mira to a train station where he promises he'll meet up
with her after rescuing Lucy. Are you noticing how similar a lot of
this is to Hitman,
actually? You have Olga Kurylenko playing a character with a
virtually identical name (Mika/Mira) that is a major playing chip in
a plot involving a man trying to become the president of Russia. You
have a ruthless badass, betrayed by his employers and now waging a
one man war against them, protecting Kurylenko's character at all
costs. They even nailed the whole “taking a train out of Russia
while the badass heads off for an 'odds stacked against him
showdown'” that closed out Hitman.
I'm not saying writers Karl Gajdusek and Michael Finch ripped off
Hitman because NO ONE
in their right mind has seen that movie, but it is an eerie
coincidence. Maybe when Skip Woods wrote Hitman,
he “borrowed” elements from 1987's There Are No Spies,
the novel that the November Man
is based on.
While
everyone meets up at a park, Mira goes to the train station and buys
tickets. This proves to be a rare slip up from Peter as he didn't
warn her to not use her credit card, because this alerts Alexa to her
location. Isn't that something a highly trained CIA agent would
think about? Don't leave a paper trail? Hanley lets Peter talk to
Lucy for a few moments before ending the call, during which we see
Celia tracing the line. Peter tells Hanley the bus station Mira is
heading to, which of course isn't the one she's actually at. Hanley
sends David off to retrieve her, but in reality David drives towards
Lucy's location that Celia texts to him.
The
agent Hanley sent along with David tries to stop him, but David
smashes into a wall at full speed to take him out. DAMN! There
probably was a less fucking stupid way to do that, but at least it
looked cool! Fortunately David wasn't too far from Lucy's location,
so he runs there guns akimbo and blasts the shit out of everyone
holding her prisoner. Since she lost a lot of face by not killing
Federov, I wonder can Mira play the badass game now? Mira and Alexa
lock eyes at the train station, Mira leading her on a chase to the
top floor where she takes a construction worker's shovel and
OBLITERATES Alexa's face with it! Yes, yes I would say Mira can
hang.
That
minor inconvenience over, Mira returns to the computer terminal she
was sitting at and continues working on a tell-all story she was
writing about Federov. I LOVE how totally casual she is about this.
David returns to Hanley and begins shooting up Hanley's men, Peter
thanking him as he walks to the top of the park's stairs where Lucy
is waiting in a car. They drive to the train station and reunite
with Mira, who sends her story to Edgar's boss at the New York Times.
We close things out with Mira telling her story before a military
tribunal, which transitions to Federov on a yacht watching the news
about the end of his quest to become president. He doesn't seem too
upset about it however, as the ship is filled with young bikini clad
women. I was going to say he came out the victor in all of this,
getting to frolic with hot babes instead of the soul sucking grinding
of politics until a mysterious sniper offshore shoots him through the
head. His body falls into the water... and the movie ends?!? What?
That's
it, I guess. Cue the credits, set to Aloe Blacc's WONDERFULLY
atmospheric “Ticking Bomb”.
Federov
technically wasn't even the Big Bad in all of this, why does he get
to close the movie out? What happened to Hanley? Or Peter and
David? Did they get in any kind of trouble for killing at least a
dozen CIA agents? That seems like something that would at least
warrant a write up, if not a life sentence in prison! Especially
with this whole fiasco going public like it did, the government
aren't exactly big fans of their fuck ups being aired for the entire
world to see.
Abrupt
ending aside, I liked this movie a lot. The highlight of it was that
it was an R-rated movie that actually USED it rating appropriately,
as this thing was quite violent. You get to see blood and the
impacts of bullets hitting people without masking it through the
Shaky Cam style you usually see in these kinds of films. It is
incredible the effect this has on making a movie feel more real and
visceral, something I haven't seen in a very long time from a movie
that wasn't called the Raid: Redemption.
Brosnan
was by far and away the highlight of the movie, turning in a
surprisingly layered performance in a film that was basically about
shooting people. He is an actor's actor, a throwback to an era where
you had to do more than just look tough to carry a movie. It's a
shame he couldn't have got to play James Bond this way when he had
the role, as the producers were much more interested in turning the
series into a glorified video game at the time. I read an interview
with Brosnan saying he wanted to do this movie because he felt he had
“unfinished business” with the Bond character, if this movie goes
on to become a franchise I'd say he definitely will get his closure
here.
With
the exception of Bill Smitrovitch's wickedly evil Hanley, everyone
else here was serviceable and did their jobs. Luke Bracey was pretty
generic as you never really get a sense of his character's arc since
so much of it happened off screen. Olga Kurylenko's Mira was one of
her better roles, making up for playing yet another damsel in
distress by kicking major ass with a shovel at the end. She has
gotten much better since the days of Mika and What's-Her-Ass in Max
Payne.
The
biggest negative, and one that overshadows a lot of what the movie
did right, is the chaotic editing of the scenes. It's strange I've
now reviewed too wildly different movies in a row and came out with
almost the exact same criticism, but you almost never get a chance to
feel anything because it jumps back and forth between revelations WAY
too much. It gets almost comical towards the middle of the film
where the scenes barely last a minute and you just get ASSAULTED with
fifty things going on at once.
Still
though, a very entertaining film. Critics were less than kind,
giving this a Rotten Tomatoes score of 35 percent. Really, a
thirty-five? This film was worse than the Amazing Spider-Man 2, the
Fluffy Movie, Heaven is for Real, Paranormal Activity: The Marked
Ones, or the Robocop remake?! No, I DON'T THINK SO. The consensus was this was a
generic and cliche-ridden spy movie that does nothing to reinvent the
wheel, BUT when it's done as slick as this, I'm okay with that! This
was not just some soulless cash grab cranked out overnight, this was
the work of people actually TRYING to make an interesting film.
Will
I remember this ten years from now? Probably not. But while I was
watching it, I was mostly into it and never once got mad or had to
pause and ask myself a million questions about who is doing what and
why. Hollywood could take a lesson from this movie, and I can safely
say when the sequel comes out I'll be there to watch it. Probably
not opening day, but like first week at least. And can you ask
better than that? I DON'T THINK SO.
No comments:
Post a Comment