SnoopyStyle
Roland Flint (Scott Adkins) takes a job to kill the recently released drug lord Polo Yakur who put his wife in a coma. Just as he is about to take the killshot, he's interrupted by assassin-for-hire Vincent Brazil (Jean-Claude Van Damme). They both fail in their attempts and reluctantly join forces against corrupt Interpol agents to hunt down their elusive target.Ernie Barbarash is very much a B-movie director. The start is too disjointed trying to get the movie going. The movie improves once the two guys team up. They are able to develop a little bit of chemistry. Adkins is a bit stiff but Van Damme has a small amount of fun. Van Damme has that faded star quality and would make for a good villain. This is not that bad but it doesn't exceed its B-movie DNA.
Mayank Dua
In little words --- what else could a man want from a movie. I mean i am no expert or a qualified guy but of late there have been very few movies that have been so riveting. I mean I went to see Thor 2nd. I expected it to be a drab and it was so as with Robocop and all the other big budget movies with their promotion and gizmo's, they literally suck. I went in to watch this movie expecting it to be another mindless bore but what i saw was repeated yeah... but well done. And lo and behold i was a fan of Jean-Claude van Damme all over again. Scott Adkins was great. Different from his "Undisputed" self. Jean has used hid age gained calmness well.
jonl6072002
Not what I expected from the movie cover and reading the plot. At first glance this seems like your typical action packed story of bad guys turned good guys that's very predictable. So I was hesitant to watch it on NETFLIX and scrolled past it several times opting for other choices. Eventually I gave it a chance and was not disappointed. The movie had a great flow to it with both drama and action all blended together with just the right mix. Jean-Claude Van Damme's character Brazil was well played simply because it was not what you expected him to be. The same applies to Scott Adkins (Roland Flint) who was not his usual "tough guy" persona as seen in Undisputed III. I was glued the entire time to the movie, especially the beautiful Marija Karan. I was also very pleased with the acting.
toll-8
I can't say I remember watching too many Van Damme movies growing up. The hand full of films I did watch generally involved him fighting, jumping, cart wheeling and doing the splits. He was not overly known for his in depth characters, his tense dramatic films or his good acting, although I do understand why people enjoyed to watch him. Let's be honest they are a bit of fun. I did manage to see his film JCVD which I thought was really good, at the point where I was really surprised at how good it was. I even thought Van Damme was also really good in it, but to be fair I'm pretty sure we can all act like ourselves and do a good job of it. Regardless that film was good and as this was the next film I had heard he had been in I was hoping for more of the same. Sadly that's not what I got. It is kind of a mix of his old stuff with a grown up feel to it.Van Damme plays an assassin. The best in the business. He lives alone in a small flat which has a secret posh bedroom in the back, he is a huge fan of knives, has no friends just associates and is paid in diamonds. This is the depth of his character. He is given a job to take out a man called Polo (Kaye). A high profile target that will double his usual fee. Little does he know that the target is actually a set up to bring out of hiding another assassin called Flint (Adkins). It is all set up by corrupt Interpol cops who Flint betrayed and ran off with lots of their money. They also know that this new target will bring him out of hiding because the target is the reason his wife is in a coma that she is unlikely to ever wake up from. Both assassins head out for their target and get in each other's way. After they fight over the job they decide to work together and take down everyone who has set them up, but will they help each other or only ever help themselves? When the film started I thought that it could have a plot that could really develop somewhere. Van Damme looked pretty cool and just like an ageing sophisticated hit-man, although after a while he did fall into the trap of becoming the same person he played in his old films. It took me a good while to finally realise I was into the film, and as soon as I realised I noticed that we were over half way through it. To be fair I had no care what so ever with the opening half of it. No character had me attached. No plot thread left me intrigued. And not one developing relationship seemed genuine. It was turning out to be a huge disappointment. The final half had me more intrigued but it had become more of a typical Van Damme action film at this point. They begin to understand who had set them up and why and we get pure action. Not that this is a bad thing but I didn't care enough for any of the characters to actually survive the onslaught.We also get a side story of Van Damme falling for a prostitute who lives next door. The scenes that tried to show this development failed miserably. They somehow began to bond over a tortoise. One minute they hated each other and the next minute it was more. It was all too rushed. Several relationships within the movie felt like this though. Not even Van Damme and Adkin's relationship seemed to develop much. They seemed to trust one another despite not knowing each other, and then didn't see it coming when they were betrayed. It had no development.The acting was hit and miss. One or two were OK, others were dreadful. There were far too many nationalities in the film, so the acting seemed poor because the accents never matched up. The Brits delivered their lines with no emotion at all, making their acting less than impressive. The acting, story, character development and relationships just did not work.Since I've watched it I found out that it was made on a small budget, and shot in Romania, so maybe with the small budget they had to go with cheap actors, but it showed. It wasn't a good movie, but I'm not really disappointed. I wasn't expecting much. The cinematography is pretty good for the budget, and the colour within the shots bought something to the film. I just wish it was done better, and if they took away some of the poor twists in the story line, hired some better actors, played it a little more straight and didn't have people doing silly jumps in mid air it could have been a good film.1.5 / 5For more reviews: www.tolli-movieworld.blogspot.com
