Elevator Pitch
A group of special forces soldiers undertake a black op in Bagdhad to recover some banknote printing plates and a billion dollars in notes and are successful, but their authority for the job, General Morrison is apparently killed in an explosion, and the plates stolen by a mercenary employed by “Black Forest”, or by a CIA operative. As a result they are imprisoned, and the policewoman who has authorised the task is demoted. After six months in prison they escape, and go on the track of the plates again, finding the same people taking positions against them.
Content
We are introduced to the team as they escape from the Mexican military in a lengthy helicopter chase. As part of the military force in Iraq they cleverly recover a container of printing plates and bank notes. After doing jail time they escape in a cargo aircraft and are shot down by drones, then set up the main event on a container ship in an American port. There is a lot of gunfire and several major explosions, some smoking and quite a bit of beer drinking. No sex (although they talk about it) or nudity.
A View
One of the problems of having very complex heists is that they are difficult to follow, and so for quite a bit of the time I had no idea what was going on, but that said some of the set pieces worked really well. I particularly liked people abseiling down the outsides of glass skyscrapers while others tried to shoot them down with machine guns. I used to watch the TV series and enjoyed it, and fpr better or worse this production caught the atmosphere pretty well. If you like action films maybe a watch, but bear in mind that even of you pay attention you may not know what is going on.
Duration | 1h 57m | Rating (UK) | 12A |
Source of story | A TV series from the 1980s | ||
Director | Joe Carnahan | ||
Writers/Script | Joe Carnahan, Brian Bloom. Skip Woods (characters by Frank Lupo, Stephen J. Cannell) | ||
Starring | Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Brian Bloom, Jon Hamm | ||
Additional Info | The estimated budget was $110 million and it seems likely that overall it lost money, so a projected sequel was cancelled. |
Discussion
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