Hello there!
To answer the question none of you are asking, I have no idea if this will return with the same regularity it used enjoy.
Right, that's that bollocks out of the way, let's kick off with this film.
Watching this film was like spending ninety minutes being whacked in the face with a cricket bat made of dumb.
Where to begin? Well, a partial listing of the flaws in order of appearance will do. This film starts with Tom Wilkinson talking some absolute fucking guff about psychopathy without, somehow, displaying any outward signs of embarrassment.
He's leading a team of mercenaries in Georgia (the country, not the state) who have been hired to expedite the construction of a gas pipeline. His second in command is his daughter played, with admirable career consistency of terribleness, by Ruby Rose. Someone who has gone from obscurity to screen prevalence having leap-frogged the troublesome middle period of learning how to act.
Anyway, There's a village of humble, well-armed peasant-folk who are reluctant to leave their small settlement made almost entirely of rubble. Rather than following the more obvious, less risky approach of a cash incentive, Andy Serkis, (pretending to be a working class tough guy) who has hired the mercs, instructs them to murder-kill all the locals. Definitely the best approach in the era of high-def live streaming smartphones with global reach, eh?
Fuckwit.
We then see some twat on a Triumph ride up to the front gates of a house so vast it makes Wayne Manor look like a retirement bungalow. The rider is some fella who has probably won numerous awards in the 'Most Posh Man in Smugshire' competitions. He's there to grab his dead nan's ring (in the jewelry sense) as he's going to propose to his girlfriend.
Lord Tarquin de Pfeffel Ponce-Window then goes to the hospital where his girlfriend (Dr. Plot Convenience) works and tells her that they're going to Paris on the Eurostar that weekend. Being the type of horrific cunt that he is, he tells her that any plans she may already have are irrelevant because it's something he wants to do. He plans on proposing to her in Paris, so that's OK then.
The next scene we find out that Ponce-Window is in a team of super-good mega-soldiers. They are going to raid the stupidly expensive looking house in Hampstead Heath where Wilkinson, Rose and assorted other people live.
Ponce-Window walks into the grounds where a pregnant lady is doing some gardening.
As a joke, I said to Podd "I reckon her baby bump is fake and it's a bag full of guns,"
He knocks her out with a magic injection. Her baby bump is a bag full of guns.
Anyway, they raid the house, blah, blah, blah.
Ponce-Window goes back to the hospital and gets his better half to stitch up his latest grenade injury. He tells her that killing people doesn't bother him. She finds that unsettling. How will they manage to overcome their differences, eh?
They eventually get on the train to Paris which, by tectonic-sized contrivance, also has most of the remaining mercenaries on board.
They stop the train mid-tunnel and hold the passengers hostage. Backup mercenaries arrive with a shit-tonne of guns, explosives, drilling equipment, comms devices and suchlike.
The terrorists demands are "Payment and safe passage out of the country."
Right. Firstly, the north London house you were using as a base of operations was an easy ten million quids worth. The shit you use to hold the train hostage has gotta be worth enough to retire the whole team anywhere in the world. As for safe passage out of the country... you were on the fucking Eurostar, in disguise and undetected heading into continental Europe. How did that logic-turd not get shat out in the planning stages?
"What's the plan, Boss?"
"First we splash a dickload of money on equipment."
"OK"
"Then we sneak out of the country."
"OK"
"After spending a fortune and escaping the country, we make ourselves the most public people on Earth and demand money and a means of escape."
"Brilliant. Those crayons taste good?"
"Yes. This one is blue flavour."
If you've ever seen an action film, you can work out the rest.
This film also asks us to believe that Brexit-era Britain would elect a brown-skinned man as Prime Minister. Depressingly, I probably don't need to tell you how vanishingly unlikely that is. I think I have more chance of wanking on the moon.
(Trivia: Wanking On The Moon was the original song title before Sting changed his mind. Probably.)
An explosion that shatters the reinforced windows of a train for fifty yards in both directions leaves a man ten foot away from the detonation completely unharmed.
After a fight in sub-zero conditions, miles from anywhere, a man who has been stabbed, punched, shot and kicked many times, decides to ignore the functioning vehicle and walk back to civilisation.
In fairness, it was a Range Rover, so there's a good chance it might have completely bollocksed itself within a mile anyway.
At one point, about a third in, two people have a conversation through the bowl of a broken toilet. I can't be bothered to make one up, but imagine I've just typed a witty metaphor about the script of this film.
Am I being a little unfair on this? It doesn't pretend to be anything but nonsense, so perhaps. However, unless you have very undemanding tastes, you might find this to be unforgivably bad.
In conclusion, this is a badly scripted, poorly plotted, OK-acted, Gammon wank fantasy that I truly hope doesn't become the franchise I suspect it will be.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4479380/
2/10
Anyway, how are you all doing?
