Summary
Gerard Butler is a pilot who must face off against violent insurgents after his plane goes down.
Meh.
I could really leave the review there as there isn’t much more to say. It is a perfectly serviceable action film but nothing more. For anyone hoping for a do-over of Olympus Has Fallen this is nowhere near that level, nor is it near the levels of awfulness that make something like God’s Of Egypt fun. It is exactly what you would expect it to be and that is why it is so disappointing.
Perhaps the only thing of note that is positive about this film is the fact that Butler gets to go fully Scottish and let his accent come out which is nice as his barely faux American accents were starting to get grating. In terms of his performance Butler is as he ever is here, if you have ever seen one of his films then you know what that entails. There is a scene in which one of Butlers character’s passengers gets killed and he throws himself around and looks emotional whilst in the arms of Mike Coulter’s character, that I suppose could count as Butler trying to do some acting here but even then it is still fairly thin.
In terms of Mike Coulter if he thought this was going to be his breakout action role, in a post Luke Cage sphere, then he was sorely mistaken. His character is really more of a prop, being there to service Butler’s character and the plot, being whatever it needs him to be. It is strange that the script never really addresses the crime his character was accused of doing beyond stating it once, they set up a whole narrative that never comes to anything at all. To his credit Coulter’s incredibly limited performance makes Butler look like he deserves an Oscar so if nothing else I am sure Butler is thanking him.
Overall, not campy enough to be fun and too formulaic and familiar to be interesting.
2.5/5
Pros.
It is watchable
Some of the CGI is hilariously bad
It is short
Cons.
The performances are awful
The script feels like it is copied and pasted from many other action films with barely anything unique to it
It never addresses Coulters character’s backstory
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Another Millennial Reviewer 