24 Hours to Live (2017)

Elevator Pitch: A retired assassin, Travis Conrad, is tempted back to work to eliminate a witness to the doubtful activities of Red Mountain, a South African conglomerate. The witness is being protected by Lin Bisset, a Chinese employee of Interpol and soon Travis is on the case, getting together with her in an airport and later in a hotel. But she outwits and kills him. The 24 hours of the title is the use by Red Mountain of a scientific development which revives him so that he can tell them the location of the witness, and once done they intend to kill him again, but he escapes. Then with a timer on his wrist counting down to zero, he determines to take on the conglomerate.

Content: It is implied that Travis and Lin have sex, but no sex related nudity. There is almost continuous gunfire with all sorts of weapons including a sniper rifle with a special sight, that is except when high speed car chases are taking place. A shanty town, maybe Soweto features, as the villains attempt to drive through it but are prevented by the locals, Travis and Lin. As Travis’s clock counts down he gets closer to the chief executive of Red Mountain, the conglomerate, despite the numerous black clad gunmen in his path.

A View: I think we first saw people being temporarily brought back from the dead in Torchwood where the capability might be better used. As one or two people have observed, it is handy that Travis has a clock on his wrist. It is just a bit unfortunate that South Africa is becoming well used in movies such as this one, particularly the shanty towns, so as soon as we glimpse the environment we know what to expect. In rather a mediocre shoot’em up the Chinese actress did really well I thought, although she and Hawke never looked like a couple. So only a watch if you have consumed all the other shoot’em ups there are out there.

Additional info: Only one trivia item on IMDb, so here’s one. Chinese actress Xu Qing was nominated for best actress in the 1992 film “Ripples Across Stagnant Water”.