"Psychopaths are incapable of love."
Hello everyone!
But I was effectively busy with a lot of other stuff and other reviews until this weekend when I sat down to give it a go.
Now the thing here is that I mostly wanted to watch it for the lead actor, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I did find some of the supporting cast enjoyable to watch as well, but I'll admit that I wouldn't have been too fussed if some of them had been changed around. Either way, the lead was my ticket in, and that's about it!
Then again, I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought along those lines lol.
If you've ever looked around the internet, you'll see that fan groups are probably one of the biggest banes in existence if you're not careful. This one at least seems mostly civilized for the time being.
But enough of my chattering! Time to dig into the business of this movie.
SAS: Red Notice is up.
I'm fairly sure I might have a movie or two similar to this one somewhere on the blog, but I can't remember them off the top of my head so this will be sans any links down below.
And if you haven't yet figured out I watched this one because of Sam Heughan, well then my friends, I will tell you that now. It was Heughan and Heughan alone who was the main draw for me. Ruby Rose is an okay actress and I enjoyed her as Batwoman in the show's first season, but even though I've seen her in some other movies since, I can't say I'd have lost sleep if she hadn't been cast in this one.
Nope, definitely Heughan for me, as shallow as it is.
ANYWAY.
Our movie begins with Andy Serkis apparently in Georgia for the British government so a pipeline can go through, and he has a group of mercenaries called Black Swans working for him to ensure it happens. One village obstinately refuses to be relocated, and while Andy wants things done peacefully, Grace (Rose) goes in and ends up in a shoot-out, which eventually leads to them killing all the men and the boys and burning the village down.
Unfortunately for them someone catches them on their phone and the video goes viral, which means the SAS (this would be the British version of SEALs) move in to serve them their red notice, which is to say, arrest/death warrant.
Point of the team is Tom Buckingham (Heughan), who ends up being the only one to use lethal force in their otherwise zap-them-silly-but-don't-kill-them raid when one of the Swans comes at him with a live grenade in her hand which he and his buddy Declan (Tom Hopper) barely escape out the nearest window.
He's stood down for the time being, but Grace had been warned the SAS were moving and so she wasn't there when the raid took place and during which her father died. Tom, meanwhile, goes to his long-time girlfriend and convinces her to go to Paris with him, despite her apparent misgivings because he seems so unfazed by anything and everything that happens to him in his job. She's especially concerned about his non-issue with the fact he had to kill someone in self-defense (er, doc, it's called SELF-DEFENSE for a reason there), and it's bound to be a long ass train trip to France if she keeps on harping that he needs to unload his feelings about it.
Turns out it's going to be even longer because Tom spots Grace on the train, and even as he sends the confirmation to his team, Grace regroups with some of her own and hijacks said train they're all on.
Then the SAS gives the order for Tom to start the procedures they have in place for hijackings while they hustle to join him, and all's well in the world.
PSYCH. Nope.
SAS drags it's freaking legs on this and as long as it took them to respond to the crisis I was convinced Grace and her cohorts would have been long gone, and their massive issue seems to be why the hell Tom is on the same train too.
I don't know guys, does it matter when he's the only one you have behind enemy lines??? You NEED to sort out your priorities!
This is just an added exaggeration on the movie's part to indicate one or more of the SAS top tier soldiers are Grace's snitches, because just dawdling as they do is proof enough, and Andy Serkis loses it once he gets down there and actually points out the what's what: they're either going to be soldiers and do it or they'll get the hell back home and let professionals handle the situation.
Not that I would call professional that they attempt an assault on the train, get into a shoot-out, and instead of pushing forward (like any self-respecting special forces operator would have done because withdrawing would make matters worse) they pull back.
Fantastic work guys. Slow clap for you.
Meanwhile Tom's been carrying the elephant's share of the work by evading capture, getting weapons, and trying to get his girlfriend Sophie out of there, and I will say she does some quick thinking as well by saving her phone and offering one of the others up in exchange when the phones are snatched by the hijackers. She's also a doctor so Grace uses her to help a wounded little girl, though Sophie and Tom spirit the girl away while Tom heads back into the fight.
Things turn much tenser because Grace wants to negotiate with Andy's character, but even while this is happening Tom (by virtue of snooping) realizes she's got a bomb planted on the gas pipeline that runs between the two channel tunnels and she'll probably blow it even if she gets her 500 billion.
He does his level best, even gets into a stand-off with Grace over Sophie, but eventually with the back and forth, Grace (who by then has deduced Sophie is important to this player) makes a statement about what happened in Georgia, that the British government ordered it, ignites the bomb on the pipeline and hightails it out of there with Sophie as her hostage.
While it turns out that Declan was the snitch (though to be fair it's not 100% clear if his boss wasn't the one beforehand and Declan just picked up the slack, I have to double check this), Tom heads on into the pipeline after his girl, and Sophie, even wounded, tells him she gets it now (the it being the fact that, hey, sometimes he needs to kill in this job he does) and to drop Grace when he catches up.
He does do this, but not after Grace makes an elaborate speech about how they're just the same and he's also a psychopath, but special. Tom agrees that he is special, alright, right before he kills her, alluding to the fact that he's in love and actually enjoys it.
Anyway, he and Sophie finally make it to Paris where he proposes with his grandmother's ring (it's implied through the movie that his personality traits are inherited from her) and Sophie declines.
Wait, WHAT?
Yep, she says he's not the marrying type so best not, that she gets it but that's the point. This shocks poor Tom into actual tears, which makes her all elated because look, HE CAN FEEL GUYS! HE HAS FEEEEEEEEELINGS!
The shot then switches to them exchanging vows on Mallorca right before Tom gets a call from his boss Andy (who, contrary to Declan's belief, didn't get into too much trouble since Declan is their target now) with information where the money AND Declan are, and you can see the movie trick they use for their psychopaths in which the blacks of their eyes enlarge in anticipation of a kill before Sophie tells Tom to go drop him.
She never liked the bastard anyway.
Aaaaaand fin?
Now don't get me wrong - I thoroughly enjoyed the action aspect of this movie. It was predictable at times because we've seen most of this before, but I genuinely liked Heughan's performance and he and Rose played off one another beautifully when sharing the screen. I also liked that he was getting more and more worn down as the story wound its way through (but I will say whoever the double was for the final shot from the back of him limping back to Sophie in France was a bit badly chosen because his body type doesn't fit Heughan's AT ALL ... moving on).
The romance though, I could have done without.
I think the problem here is we aren't shown the relationship through its stages and only see it in the final one right before the proposal, and we're supposed to just believe Sophie has doubts because Tom isn't an over emotional bunny who cries on her shoulder all the time (it's actually funny because an older woman on the train tells her as much as they're discussing over drinks: not everyone needs a shoulder to cry on, especially of the male variety). This was especially annoying when she asks Tom if he would have shot her, too, if she'd been coming at him with a grenade.
Uh, girl. A live grenade is in play. What do you THINK?
The entire thing honestly felt contrived and forced in how poor Tom had to cry because she turned him down before she actually accepted his proposal, and although I can appreciate how they wanted to draw parallels between the psychopaths in the movie, by the end of it, with Sophie so cold-heartedly demanding he drop certain people, I'm not entirely sure what we're supposed to think. That it's actually Sophie who's the psychopath, or at least a high-functioning sociopath, and Tom just found someone who really gets him?
Plus talking about his missions out in the open and so loudly has got to be violating some code or other, right? I mean, it was a fairly covert op - names weren't being dropped in the media - and I thought these special forces kept a tight lid on it. Apparently not, for drama's sake or something.
So to cut this short: the action was good, the tension was fine (other than the SAS dragging their feet, probably done on purpose in this movie to highlight the snitch), I enjoyed Heughan in a slightly different role from his Outlander shoes, Ruby Rose worked well enough as the psychopath, but I could have done without this incessant need to have poor Tom spill his guts out every time he moved a pinkie finger at work. These operators have psychiatrists on hand and other devoted team members not in the field to help them process what's happened and what's what! At least that's what I've been led to understand.
If they leave the job at the door to go try and have normal lives with their loved ones, I don't really see a problem, and because of how convoluted the message of the movie was, I'm starting to think there might be something wrong with ME, not the movie.
Why did I have an issue with her and not him??
Anyway, watch it for the action, not the romance. The romance could have been cut out and the movie would have worked just the same!
xx
*images and video not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment