film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Ejiofor and Hathaway are game, but they’re grasping for something solid, and don’t find it. A deeply unsatisfying novelty artifact of the pandemic that fails to create a necessary sense of transgression.
Accidental hilarity turns ugly in this baffling exercise in genre-hopping that thinks it justifies its Hollywood-typical adolescent-boy attitudes about women, sex, violence, and morality. It does not.
An elegant potboiler that judiciously balances psychological and physical suspense, one that feels like a romantic drama from WWII only recently rediscovered.
We say things like, “Oh, I’d watch that guy read the phone book,” and this is almost that. Except it really is absolutely riveting, and that’s no joke.
Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall are as engaging as ever, and the film raises intriguing issues concerning the “War on Terror”; pity the plot descends into the ridiculous.
Some of it is hilariously awful, and some is just plain awful. But Statham’s attempt to be taken seriously as an actor is honest, at least.
