An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but, since there was a decent cast involved, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, there is no denying that the directing was rather uninspired and uninspiring and that the story was, at the same time, really generic but also terribly far-fetched. And, yet, I have to admit that the damned thing was actually still watchable somehow. I think it mostly had to do with the main character, Mitch Rapp, and the fact that Dylan O'Brien was a good choice to play this character. Indeed, on paper, Rapp is a completely ridiculous character whose background is rather unbelievable and, yet, as pointed out by his mentor Stan Hurley, the fact that he is so unpredictable made him actually quite entertaining to watch. On the other hand, I have to admit that I have never been interested in O'Brien but I think he was quite charismatic here and he played the whole thing so straightforward, even though the material was so actually rather ridiculous and it worked surprisingly well. Michael Keaton was also fine playing his mentor but I wouldn't expect less from the veteran actor. By the way, I thought it was rather funny that they introduced Scott Adkins as his big rival while the guy didn’t have any dialogue and, even worse, got killed so easily during the first minutes of their very first mission. Eventually, you might wonder what a better director could have done with this story by turning it in something darker or more unhinged or simply just plain weirder. Apparently, this story was based on a series of very popular books so they clearly hoped to start a franchise but, since this movie didn’t get much love when it was released, I guess you can forget about it. Anyway, to conclude, I think I might have been slightly too generous with my rating here but I guess it might still be worth a look though but probably only if you really like the genre. 

6/10