Rupert Friend – Action Hero Movies

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.

In the first ten minutes we get some good action with cars, plus a terribly made fight scene where the visibility is poor (half dark half light) and there’s constant flashing lights, camera angle switching and white noise music – enough to give a normal person heightened levels of stress – stay clear of this movie if you’re epileptic.

After 10 minutes, the camera work continues to be poor, zooming in constantly on normal conversations, to the point we can’t get an objective feel of the interaction. This is very restrictive mood setting and it’s in conflict with the kind of comfortable vibe that a good action hero movie should seek to create.

Add to this, Rupert Friend having less character than Timothy Olyphant, this movie is significantly poorer than the original Hitman movie of 2007. Still, it’s got a decent amount of action, a fair cast and a fair budget – it’s clearly better than a B movie, and it’s kind of hitting the right genre, so I think we can rate this movie as just OK. Better than barely watchable, so not the lowest rating out of all the movies we’ve featured on this site – just one level better.

While in the original movie, Timothy Olyphant played a cool calm killer whose cheeky charisma started shining through, making it an interesting recipe. In this movie now, Rupert Friend has a totally flat personality – there’s nothing shining through except a weird mix of anxiety and meek personality. No wonder his fight scenes are all over the place with switching camera angles – he probably can’t throw a decent punch or kick to save his life.

The lead female is played by Hannah Ware – her character has extra-sensory perceptions, and is the estranged daughter of the original chief scientist behind this cult of assassins. Unfortunately, her acting isn’t much better than Rupert Friend’s – they’re both made for drama, not action hero movies, and most definitely not lead roles in action hero movies. She has the constant demeanour of an abuse victim, and she lacks the ability to adjust her mood according to the requirements of the scene. She clearly only got this role because of who her parents are and what cult she’s been raised in, in real life.

Zachary Quinto plays the chief antagonist in this movie, and unfortunately, he is also kind of made for drama. He has the constant demeanour of a kid in a candy shop. Being skinny isn’t enough to be a good action movie star, you really need good physical coordination and a collected look in your eyes too.

The director, or whichever producer was really calling the shots, should have probably been sacked along with pretty much all the cast members, then we could have probably picked a load of random guys from the stunt team to replace them all and made an equal or better movie with the same script & budget. It seems like, the actors here are all behind-the-scenes crew members who decided to have a party and pretend to be action heroes themselves. While this probably isn’t true, it’s not a million miles off, since Quinto is also producer, while Friend & Ware are best known for their parts in political dramas, and the other roles are all played by people with similar producer & dramatist vibes.

On the plus side, the plot gets a lot more interesting as it nears the half hour mark, and we get some interesting scenes, before more boring drama. This movie pretty much alternates between decent and mediocre scenes throughout.