I am not going to label myself as a fan of anybody because I honestly don't know anyone in the movie except for Neal McDonough and one look at him and you know he is going to play some sort of CIA guy or ambassador guy or one of those office pencil pushers who is secretly a super agent.
Movie starts off on a dark note and I can understand how and why they chose to begin that way but the rest of the movie was so twice removed from the intro that you begin to wonder why even include it in the first place?!
Story was highly predictable. Some corrupt cops, some bad guys, some other bad guys who are just thugs and then some super bad guys.
One of the biggest issues I had with this movie is that fights looked very believable but the rest of the movie did not. You could practically recite every single line for every single person in the movie if you had it on mute. I thought it was a poor choice of decision to make this movie anglo-latino bilingual. Make Latin culture communicate in their native tongue, none of this cross bridging nonsense. Naturally they did not film in Brazil so it was very obvious by location shoot, accents, languages used and more.
If you can generally survive predictable dialogue and somewhat of a predictable story line and poor acting and highly predictable characters... this movie is a decent watch while waiting for something more substantial to arrive in a netflix queue.
One of the biggest problems with this movie is that it could have been ohh so much more. Instead we have an unstoppable machine that was a little too powerful for the movie itself. If you remember a movie like Elite Squad and Elite Squad Enemy Within... that gets you a general ballpark of quality of movies that could have come out of this whole thing. Even on a low budget it is possible to produce such an amazing movie like Juan of the dead or Una Noche (granted I felt this movie had a lot of flaws but at the very least quality of film stood out).
One of the biggest issues of shoving a big brute into a movie and not giving him appropriate competition is that he or she will inevitably turn into Steven Segal that pretty much plows through anything and anyone and you quickly lose interest. You need to have right opponents and this movie, honestly, did not deliver that. Even in closing scenes there was no sitting on the edge of your seat.
The story of a veteran is a story that was re-told about a zillion times. The face of a Neal is telling enough to let you know that there will be politics and corruption involved. The cheesy detectives let you know what the movie is about as soon as camera pans to them.
I gave this movie a 4 and I honestly think it could get a 6 if it tried a little harder.
Movie starts off on a dark note and I can understand how and why they chose to begin that way but the rest of the movie was so twice removed from the intro that you begin to wonder why even include it in the first place?!
Story was highly predictable. Some corrupt cops, some bad guys, some other bad guys who are just thugs and then some super bad guys.
One of the biggest issues I had with this movie is that fights looked very believable but the rest of the movie did not. You could practically recite every single line for every single person in the movie if you had it on mute. I thought it was a poor choice of decision to make this movie anglo-latino bilingual. Make Latin culture communicate in their native tongue, none of this cross bridging nonsense. Naturally they did not film in Brazil so it was very obvious by location shoot, accents, languages used and more.
If you can generally survive predictable dialogue and somewhat of a predictable story line and poor acting and highly predictable characters... this movie is a decent watch while waiting for something more substantial to arrive in a netflix queue.
One of the biggest problems with this movie is that it could have been ohh so much more. Instead we have an unstoppable machine that was a little too powerful for the movie itself. If you remember a movie like Elite Squad and Elite Squad Enemy Within... that gets you a general ballpark of quality of movies that could have come out of this whole thing. Even on a low budget it is possible to produce such an amazing movie like Juan of the dead or Una Noche (granted I felt this movie had a lot of flaws but at the very least quality of film stood out).
One of the biggest issues of shoving a big brute into a movie and not giving him appropriate competition is that he or she will inevitably turn into Steven Segal that pretty much plows through anything and anyone and you quickly lose interest. You need to have right opponents and this movie, honestly, did not deliver that. Even in closing scenes there was no sitting on the edge of your seat.
The story of a veteran is a story that was re-told about a zillion times. The face of a Neal is telling enough to let you know that there will be politics and corruption involved. The cheesy detectives let you know what the movie is about as soon as camera pans to them.
I gave this movie a 4 and I honestly think it could get a 6 if it tried a little harder.