A good movie

To be honest, with its title and since Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo were involved,  I wasn’t really expecting much from this flick and I was assuming that it would be another forgettable cheap action flick. However, since it was directed by Joe Carnahan, I thought I might as well check it out anyway. Well, I must admit that I was actually positively surprised by the damned thing after all. Indeed, the set-up was pretty straightforward but I always had a weak spot for minimalistic features and I thought it was well developed by Carnahan. Furthermore, Butler and Grillo were both really on point and nailed their respective characters. I was also really impressed by Alexis Louder. Indeed, I had never seen her before but she was so charismatic here and I really believe she gave a star-making performance here. Concerning the dialogues, I have noticed that some people complained that they tried too much to emulate Tarantino’s style but, even though I understand the comparison, I actually don’t agree. Indeed, the dialogues were quite entertaining but they never reached the level of complexity heard in a Tarantino feature. Sure, at some point, everything did end up in some massive shoot-out but that could be said about 80% of all the action flicks out there. Anyway, another thing that I enjoyed by this movie was the fact that, sure, from the outside, it might look like another dumb action flick (it was still nothing really deep though), the characters actually always made sense. For example, at some point, Valerie made the choice to trust Teddy instead of Bob and, even though the outcome might have been predictable, the action and reactions of the 3 characters were all actually logical and not solely plot-driven which I did appreciate. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was not an actual masterpiece, it still turned out to be a solid action flick and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

7/10