Dir: Kriv Stenders
Year: 2015
Cast: Simon Pegg, Alice Braga, Sullivan Stapleton, Callen Mulvey, Luke Hemsworth, Teresa Palmer, Bryan Brown
Genre: Action/Comedy/Crime
Cert: 15
What if Quentin Tarantino was Australian? That's the question that this highly entertaining Aussie romp tries to answer! It doesn't really answer it... Simon Pegg plays a slick, suave, highly skilled British assassin who is hired by notorious drug-dealer and bar owner, Callen Mulvey, to kill his wife, Alice Braga, for a healthy sum. While tracking her down to do this, he follows her to a dental appointment she has. Her dentist, Sullivan Stapleton, is a compulsive gambler who now owes money to crooked police man, Bryan Brown. His wife, Teresa Palmer, is also his receptionist and the sister of Callen; She also thinks Alice is an arsehole and wouldn't mind seeing her dead.
Stapleton and Palmer devise a plan to kidnap Alice and kill her in an elaborate ruse to obtain insurance money all the while Pegg is following them trying to regain control of the situation. Alice's mechanic lover, Luke Hemsworth, is also trying to track down Alice and will take down anyone in his way in order to find her. See what I mean about it not really answering the question?
I have to say, I was pleased with this film; not going to say pleasantly surprised because I thought it looked good anyway, but it delivered on the front I thought it would. Pegg is always enjoyable to watch and to see him as a somewhat honourable assassin was quite fun. He's very precise, fair and somewhat demanding, but he can be, as he can back up his promises with great skill. Often quoted throughout saying "I'll be there in an hour" - The first instance of this is while he's killing some unlucky twat he was casually chasing down in a muscle car.
Callen plays the typical "Violently in love" with his wife type character you get in films now, where they love them so much, they'd rather see them dead than with someone else. It's fucking stupid but hey, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece here. Braga was grand too, bit different from her usual badass action heroine output she normally does like in Predators and Repo Men. Luke Hemsworth looked like an early draft of a painting of Liam Hemsworth that someone sat on. Bryan Brown was good, he works well as an intimidating type, I remember liking him in the enjoyably dark, Two Hands. Stapleton is known for playing tough-guy types but instead was a bumbling fool of a man here, with his bollocks kept safe in his wife's pocket.
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I was surprised by how vivid and brilliant the colour and cinematography was... for the first 30 mins. It looked excellent and the colour was properly vibrant and planned so well, but it seemed like the film was just teasing what the director CAN do rather than just doing it. After the 30 mins it still looked great, but it wasn't trying as hard to impress with it's shots or camera work, it was just regular from then on and seemed kinda lazy considering how good it looked before.
But one thing they weren't lazy with was the violence; holy shit did they do that well and to surprising effect! I was expecting this to be dumb and entertaining and with a little bit of action but it's fucking brutal at times! This being one of the strong points because I've said countless times, having great action and shitty CGI blood fly everywhere completely cancels out the greatness of the action. It properly added to it in this and gave the film that bit of grit; cause this is for the most part a comedy, so having some dark scenes made it stronger.
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| He'd make a great Bond villain in one of the older flicks. |
The story is fairly muck though, it has to be said. It's such a boring and unoriginal premise that has been done to death and it features a shitload of cliches that are so tired that I think studios should reject the scripts based on that. Almost all of the dialogue is straight out of an episode of Home and Away or Neighbours or whatever mouldy gock soap operas are still famous over there. Pegg's dialogue was great, he really holds the film together; he's funny, charismatic and has pretty much all of the best scenes. One of which includes a nice little nod to Hot Fuzz, which I can definitely say was the intention cause Pegg certainly enjoys his movie in-jokes with Edgar Wright.
Over all, there's not much that can be said about this flick; it's exactly what you expect it to be. It's not breaking any boundaries and doing anything new, but it's a fun way spend 90 mins without a functioning brain. It's got good action and practical violence and some decent laughs mainly from the gob of Pegg, so it ticks all the boxes it will need to tick. I've seen many compare this to Tarantino in how the plot is structured but it's not of his style at all. It just has 3 acts, snappy dialogue and squibs; Nothing else.
See this to be entertained, not to be moved; that way, you'll surely enjoy it!
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