This movie begins with the lead character wearing a white wig, not dissimilar to Atomic Blonde. She then goes on a bit of a killing spree, to obtain something from someone’s safe. There’s a lot of John Wick style shooting, stabbing and general hand-to-hand combat. But it’s lacking personality – all that grunting doesn’t make it any more charismatic – it’s really quite shallow in the opening scenes. The monotonous yet fast paced opening ends just about soon enough before I feet the need to fast forward, which makes for a respectable start.
After the opening action scene, we get a bit of domestic drama & romance which really shows the lead character Avery Graves (played by Kate Beckinsale) and her boyfriend David Brooks (played by Rupert Friend, from the Agent 47 sequel) as both having a serious lack of credible acting ability and a serious lack of action hero quality on top of that. Their acting is really emotionless, not even skin-deep, but in an irritable way, not in an ice-cold slick action movie star way. It’s like they’re both sleep deprived, numb zombies concentrating on something else and going through the motions while half asleep. The acting could hardly be any worse even from an indie B-movie, and come to think of it, the cinematography is pretty weak too, but it took a bit longer for me to clock on to this. Kate and Rupert both seem better suited to some kind of argumentative soap opera drama series. They’re both droning out their lines with terrible timing and zero sentiment early on – it’s really quite strange how random it is. Maybe AI made it up? It’s got a similar level of lifelessness as AI generated pictures. Maybe the audio is poorly synchronised with the lip sinking. Maybe the accents are a terrible choice. The outfits too. But the facial expressions and body language are that of sleepy grumpy teenagers while pretending to be hotshot secret agents having interesting and romantic chats. I blame the casting first & foremost, and by 10 minutes in I’m confident this movie is going to be rated Below Average at best. Aside from their individual flaws, the chemistry between the two of them couldn’t be any weaker if it tried.
The backing sound of this movie early on is a lot of white noise and screeching – it really makes me want to turn it off by the 13 minute mark. There’s very little going for this movie at all, in the beginning, and it’s really quite irritating, but it lasts over 100 minutes (including time for rolling credits). So far it’s on course for a rating even weaker than Below Average, but if the plot and action pick up in a good way, and the terrible background sound sorts itself out, then Below Average could surprisingly still be on the cards.
Fortunately, the movie does get a lot more real & interesting when the lead character’s boyfriend gets kidnapped and the kidnapper calls with his ransom demand in the 15th minute. Impressively, this energy is sustained for most of the movie, making it deserve of respectable rating of just Below Average. If it had a more advanced plot, and better actors, and more dynamic action, and higher budget cinematography, it would be easier to rewatch, but as it stands, it’s not so rewatchable until you’ve totally forgotten how it goes, and this is a big factor in why its rating remains Below Average as opposed to Bang Average – a score it only just falls short of.
Other key cast members, who are also slightly familiar faces from other movies, include Ray Stevenson who does a decent job as Avery’s boss Jarvis Hedlund (Ray passed away in May 2023 due to heart problems); Ben Miles as Nathan Evans who has a superior position to Jarvis, and Jaz Hutchins as Agent Maxfield who works directly for Nathan and has no problem outcasting & interrogating Avery and even her boss Jarvis as if he holds a more senior role or is at least on the same level. Apparently they’re all meant to be CIA agents, and I think Nathan is meant to be the director of the CIA, but it seems like Nathan & Maxfield are working for a superior agency to Jarvis & Avery, and at one point Nathan answers the phone seemingly calling someone else ‘Director’ so who knows. Their exact roles and agencies are not clearly defined in this movie, but their roles in relation to each other are clear enough.