Director: Jonathan Mostow
Writers: John Brancato (screenplay by), Michael Ferris (screenplay by)
Stars: Sam Worthington, Odeya Rush, Allen Leech
Plot: An assassin helps a young woman avenge the death of her family.
Running Time: 91 Minutes
IMDB Score: 5.5
Why I Watched It: I hadn’t heard of this film but saw it on Netflix, now I do say I liked director Mostow and the plot seem alright and I gave it a go.
Random Thoughts: Mostow has made some good films and of course he made Terminator 3 which was flawed to say the least but he hasn’t done much lately which is a shame. Let’s touch on Sam Worthington who was in a Terminator film that was more than flawed. He gets a lot of crap cause he’s bland but I will say this he’s not a bad actor, he’s more of a presence that an actor force. Also a nitpick with the plot description, he doesn’t really go out to help the girl avenge her family’s death as he tries to keep her from getting killed.
What I Liked: As the plot tells you it’s a fairly simple story and at times I like simple and to be fair I guess it’s more straight forward than simple. An assassin is told to kill a teenage girl and he doesn’t. One thing I really liked is the main character played by Worthington is a bit of a mystery we don’t know much about him and we don’t know why he doesn’t go through with the contract. Now the film unfolds and we learn things but the first half we as the audience are pretty much in the dark. I give director Mostow credit here for not throwing all the plot and all the character’s backstory at us all at once we learn things and it was done very well.
This is a pretty lean film at 91 minutes but we do flesh out not only Worthington’s character but also the girl he’s helping played by Odeya Rush, now it’s funny I hadn’t seen Rush before last week and I saw her twice in this and Goosebumps, yes two very different films, I think she has a future, I like her look and she carries herself very well for a young actress. Worthington and Rush work well together, what I liked is there’s no sexual tension stuff at all it’s played kind of like father and daughter but not heavy handed. The action was fine lots of shot outs and car chases. Worthington is more than capable of pulling off the action stuff and the thing here is Worthington doesn’t really talk that much, he’s good here cause he has to carry a lot of baggage, maybe too much for one character in a 91 minute movie but he’s very flawed and he’s worn down.
What I Didn’t Like: The story is paper thin and the weak part is the main villain and the secondary villains, all the villains are boring. The main one is just the standard rich asshole, he gets more time than you would think but it the character is not memorable at all he played by Allen Leach and he’s not bad just doesn’t stand out, this movie needed a good bad guy. Martin Compston is another hitman, the bad one and he’s just a plot point a walking cliche.
The other point that kind of bugs me is we learn things about Worthington’s character but never passed a superficial level. We get bullet points but never any real answers, we assume he doesn’t kill the girl cause he has a daughter, he never learn how he went from being in the army to being a hitman. The main bad guy threatens to kill his family but we’re never told their relationship, is he a hitman for hire or does he just work for this guy. The details would have helped shape his character more and also given us more information and we would have gotten to know him more. The ending was a little weak not badly done but very by the numbers, I will say it moved quick enough but I would have liked it to at least do something a bit different.
Final Thoughts: Not a bad movie, it was not a flashy action film and I liked it for that and both leads were good and it was well directed.
Rating: 6/10
Movie Burner Entertainment 