I've rarely seen a film in which baddies fail to shoot straight quite so much, though to be fair they sometimes fail by being too slow instead. While one can believe that a ragged Muslim militia would let off a lot of ammo for each bullet that hits, having them miss *all* the time seems to be the the easy way out of plot inconveniences.
*Spoiler follows (notionally, as there's nothing to spoil)* One really has to admire the approach to "tension" which has principal villain (driving a car) and principal hero (on the bonnet) pointing pistols at each other at (obviously) very, very short range, only for the latter to shoot first. *End of spoiler alert*. Christoph Walzer generally deserves better, but after this performance I think he'll have to clean the fragments of the scenery from his teeth himself.
The disc packaging in front of me describes Kazakhstan as an Eastern European country, inviting questions like "Is schooling available in your country?". Mind you, it also describes Captain Strong as a senior officer of the Queen's Messengers, into which he was injected (with his grudging consent) a few minutes before flying to Kazakhstan. OK, the writer of the blurb hadn't actually watched the film. Perhaps he thinks that an army captain is like a naval captain? Perhaps he doesn't actually think at all?
The "also starring..." list kicks off with Romina Mondello. She appears for about five minutes in total, bracketing the main action, and her entire part could be removed without leaving a gap. Presumably the producers found that they had a hot young Italian available for a day's shooting, and wrote a part for her. Can she act? Well, she's pointlessly angry in one miniature scene (actually written as a interruption to another scene, after which everybody forgets to lock the door again), and her two other appearances show her vamping sultrily at Captain Strong. She can do both! Weirdly, Strong seems to be at least slightly serious about the other love (sorry) sex-interest in Kazakhstan, with a teaser set up to have her still interested but not available at the of the film. Preceding and following this with scenes in which Strong seems to be coveting someone else's wife in a manner both gauche and casual has the effect of re-inventing Strong as a Bond-like misogynist hopping from one disposable woman to the next. I dare say none of this was actually thought through.
There are a lot of petrol explosions, all of them apparently CGI, and not terribly convincing. I may be more sensitive than some to this, but the main problem is that it's easier to detect CGI scenes the second and third time you see them, and all the damn explosions were so like each other that the effect was the same.
I wonder what the delivery system for those nukes was meant to be?
*Spoiler follows (notionally, as there's nothing to spoil)* One really has to admire the approach to "tension" which has principal villain (driving a car) and principal hero (on the bonnet) pointing pistols at each other at (obviously) very, very short range, only for the latter to shoot first. *End of spoiler alert*. Christoph Walzer generally deserves better, but after this performance I think he'll have to clean the fragments of the scenery from his teeth himself.
The disc packaging in front of me describes Kazakhstan as an Eastern European country, inviting questions like "Is schooling available in your country?". Mind you, it also describes Captain Strong as a senior officer of the Queen's Messengers, into which he was injected (with his grudging consent) a few minutes before flying to Kazakhstan. OK, the writer of the blurb hadn't actually watched the film. Perhaps he thinks that an army captain is like a naval captain? Perhaps he doesn't actually think at all?
The "also starring..." list kicks off with Romina Mondello. She appears for about five minutes in total, bracketing the main action, and her entire part could be removed without leaving a gap. Presumably the producers found that they had a hot young Italian available for a day's shooting, and wrote a part for her. Can she act? Well, she's pointlessly angry in one miniature scene (actually written as a interruption to another scene, after which everybody forgets to lock the door again), and her two other appearances show her vamping sultrily at Captain Strong. She can do both! Weirdly, Strong seems to be at least slightly serious about the other love (sorry) sex-interest in Kazakhstan, with a teaser set up to have her still interested but not available at the of the film. Preceding and following this with scenes in which Strong seems to be coveting someone else's wife in a manner both gauche and casual has the effect of re-inventing Strong as a Bond-like misogynist hopping from one disposable woman to the next. I dare say none of this was actually thought through.
There are a lot of petrol explosions, all of them apparently CGI, and not terribly convincing. I may be more sensitive than some to this, but the main problem is that it's easier to detect CGI scenes the second and third time you see them, and all the damn explosions were so like each other that the effect was the same.
I wonder what the delivery system for those nukes was meant to be?