Netflix presents: a movie dumb as a box of rocks. A script full of hammy cheesetastic corny lines of buff studmuffin dialog. And maybe a little bit of just-go-with-it fun… at least for awhile. And then you just want them to hurry it up and get to the part where they save the world.
The flick is about a bunch of terrorists who steal sixteen Russian nuclear missiles and then take out the only two US “interceptor” bases capable of shooting them down. Only our intrepid heroine can stop the terrorists… mainly by holing up in the command bunker with the “shoot down the missiles” button and not letting them come in and ruin everyone’s day.
When the flick starts and it tells us about how the US only has two bases capable of intercepting nukes, I – foolishly – was thinking, “well, don’t tell everyone that in a movie”. Before I realized A) how dumb I was being and B) how very very dumb this movie actually is. Plot holes you could drive trucks (or fire nukes) through… “hey wait a minute” moments galore… and massively silly dialog that you will roll your eyes at and maybe, just possibly, have some fun with.
As an action flick, it feels like a throwback to a dumber time… and I don’t think they realized that. But, as a big dumb action movie, it’s sometimes entertaining. Some pretty peppy and brutal fist fights that just might entertain. In fact, I’d say the first half is pretty fun in a really knuckle-dragging stupid kind of way. Unfortunately, the movie (at just over 90 minutes) is entirely too long and keeps throwing in predicament and fist fights well past their sell-by date. In other words, all this rigmarole just gets tedious and tiresome since they are really only working with one set and a limited number of actions.
And then one of the bad guys dies in a spectacular way and that’s fun. And then our heroine shows off so much upper-body strength, she makes every Ninja Warrior contestant sad. And the movie wildly swings between good dumb and bad dumb constantly.
Maybe you’ll enjoy it, maybe the whole thing will make you regret that Netflix payment. I’m mixed on it myself. It was never going to be a great film but slowly it became a pretty mediocre one. I wouldn’t say it ever slipped into bad territory exactly. But I would listen to anyone arguing otherwise (they’d have a point).
Score: 72