An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a decent cast involved and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, to be honest, I was actually surprised by how lame the damned thing turned out to be. It's too bad because, even if the story was nothing original, it still had some potential and I really liked the idea of a French movie trying to compete with the usual US action flicks. Unfortunately, well, pretty much nothing really worked here. Eventually, it would be rather difficult to pinpoint what was exactly the biggest issue. Was it the writing? The dialogues? The characters? The acting? The directing? It’s the kind of movie which constantly gives some text (at least, during the first 30 mins) not only to inform you about the various locations but also about the names of the characters. Seriously, I have never seen a movie relying so much on text but it displayed how lazy and weak the damned thing was. I mean, cinema is a visual Art and if you start to tell a good chunk of your story with some captions, then you should know you are in trouble. Concerning the actors involved (Diane Kruger, Djimon Hounsou, Benoit Magimel, Tchéky Karyo), they are usually pretty good but there was not much they could do with this material, there are not many actors who can still deliver a strong performance in such circumstances and I'm afraid they are not one of them. Even the action scenes were disappointing and most of them felt more like a paintball game than some actual warfare. Eventually, the damned thing was almost a commercial for the French special forces and the end-result was just seriously boring. Anyway, to conclude, it turned out to be so much weaker than I expected and I think you should pretty much avoid it, except maybe if you are a die-hard fan of the genre.

5/10