An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but, since it was directed by Renny Harlin and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, Harlin has always been a B movies director but, at least, the features he made back in the 90’s were still fun (‘Cliffhanger’, ‘Cutthroat Island’, ‘The Long Kiss Goodnight’, ‘Deep Blue Sea’) but, nowadays, he still makes some B features except that they are all so tedious. This movie was a perfect example, I’m afraid. Basically, it was another cheap generic action flick (for some reason, such movies always take place in Europe, maybe it’s cheaper to shoot there) and, above all, the writing was just so lazy. First of all, why was it called ‘The Bricklayer’? I mean, sure, it did sound cool but it had so very little impact on the story and the main character after all. Another example was that, when they arrived in Greece, the guy told his partner that they ditched their cover for something else and, then,… they did exactly nothing at all with this new cover after all. Eventually, right from the start, everybody knew who he was and he never made an effort to be more discreet, like an actual spy might be. I guess this whole cover thing was just an excuse to have Nina Dobrev wear some sexy dress and, sure, she did look lovely but I’m afraid she was otherwise rather weak for this part. Ilfenesh Hadera was however probably even worse playing the least convincing CIA Station Chief I have ever seen. Sure, I can believe that a Station Chief could be a very attractive woman, no problem with that, but I don’t think there was a single scene during which she was wearing some appropriate clothes for such a position. I could go on and on pointing out every single detail that didn’t really make sense but I think you got the point by now. Anyway, to conclude, the damned thing was pretty weak and you should probably avoid it. 

5/10