I'm into B movies, so when this came up on Netflix, I thought it might have enough action and thrills to make it worth sitting through. However, it didn't take me long to suspect that what was to follow was as badly handled in the opening sequences. For starters, the movie is really boring for the first 25 or so minutes. There is absolutely no way that establishing the situation and the characters should have taken this long.
Things do pick up a little after that point, but then the script finds new ways to be unendurable. For one thing, it soon becomes yet another clone of "Die Hard" instead of doing something more original. What makes this clone worse is that a lot of the plot turns are really stupid. Why aren't there more cops nearby where the witness is going to testify to come in should there be trouble? Would a power and maintenance room of a tall building be located on the top floor? Why doesn't the courier just pull a fire alarm to alert the authorities? Those are just some of the many hard to swallow things about the story.
The script is bad in another way. The dialogue, quite frankly, is really atrocious. It wavers between clichés done in many other movies before, and really awkward sounding statements. Making the dialogue worse are the actors to have to speak it. The acting in this movie is quite frankly awful. Gary Oldman gives a really weird performance, the witness character is extremely annoying, and the hired goons are stiff. Kurylenko isn't that great, though you do see that she's trying and may have the ability to give good performances elsewhere with the right material and the right director.
I guess the movie is not completely bad. There are some really intense bone-crunching action sequences as well a good amount of blood and gore spilled. But it's not enough to make it worth sitting through an incredible amount of awfulness. Instead of watching it... return to sender.
Things do pick up a little after that point, but then the script finds new ways to be unendurable. For one thing, it soon becomes yet another clone of "Die Hard" instead of doing something more original. What makes this clone worse is that a lot of the plot turns are really stupid. Why aren't there more cops nearby where the witness is going to testify to come in should there be trouble? Would a power and maintenance room of a tall building be located on the top floor? Why doesn't the courier just pull a fire alarm to alert the authorities? Those are just some of the many hard to swallow things about the story.
The script is bad in another way. The dialogue, quite frankly, is really atrocious. It wavers between clichés done in many other movies before, and really awkward sounding statements. Making the dialogue worse are the actors to have to speak it. The acting in this movie is quite frankly awful. Gary Oldman gives a really weird performance, the witness character is extremely annoying, and the hired goons are stiff. Kurylenko isn't that great, though you do see that she's trying and may have the ability to give good performances elsewhere with the right material and the right director.
I guess the movie is not completely bad. There are some really intense bone-crunching action sequences as well a good amount of blood and gore spilled. But it's not enough to make it worth sitting through an incredible amount of awfulness. Instead of watching it... return to sender.