Surely there must be a gap in the market for a female-led spy thriller series in the James Bond or Jason Bourne mode. Unfortunately, Unlocked is not the movie that launches that franchise, despite sticking firmly to the conventions of the genre. A little too firmly, you might say. Despite a stellar international cast headlined by Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette and Michael Douglas, this functional contemporary spy yarn is played too bluntly by 76-year-old British director Michael Apted, who brings nothing new to the film. formula in addition to the minor. innovation of dropping an action heroine into a field dominated by men.
That said, the timely plot about Islamist terror attacks on the streets of London and Paris will add a newsworthy angle to the film's marketing. Unlocked has already been widely sold in a number of territories and makes its UK theatrical debut later this week, with a US release scheduled for September. Globally, the largely conservative surge of undemanding action-thriller fans are likely to generate respectable box office numbers, but they don't pour money into a sequel.
Director: Tae-joon Kim
Writer: Akira Shiga
Stars: Si-wan Yim, Woo-hee Chun, Park Ho-San
Rapace plays Alice Racine, a prominent CIA agent working undercover in a gritty East London neighborhood where Islamist terrorist groups are known to operate. Still haunted by a Paris bombing massacre she couldn't prevent, Alice tells her former agency boss (Douglas) that she's wary of returning to active duty. But when an imminent large-scale Russian bioweapons attack suddenly seems likely, she reluctantly bows to the pressure to help interrogate a key suspect. Then all hell breaks loose.
A few treacherous twists later, Alice is on the run from a spectacular bloodbath, sneaking past London's tourist landmarks with UK and US intelligence agents tailing her. A chance meeting with a burly ex-marine turned prankster burglar (Bloom) provides her with an unexpected ally, while the brash MI5 boss (Collette) also offers ambivalent support. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a sarcastic CIA chief (John Malkovich) suspiciously monitors her progress. As Alice races against time to thwart the bioterrorist attack, it begins to look like everyone is playing a double or triple game.
In theory, Unlocked is a noble attempt to carve out a female counterpart to Bourne or Bond. But in reality, she is severely hampered by a creaky script and clunky performances. Apted has a respectable track record, but it can do little to energize a very familiar Franken plot that seems to have been patched up from half a dozen equally forgettable films and relies on a series of increasingly implausible crossover twists rather than generating its own. innate. dramatic tension. The apocalyptic bioterrorist attack, a strangely amateurish scheme hatched by a handful of deranged hardliners with poorly explained motives, also has fatally low suspense. It even climaxes with one of those frantic race-against-time countdowns that long ago turned The Shark from action-thriller staple to Austin Powers-level parody.
Rapace has cool moves, but his low-voltage performance is too waxy and empty for a leading role. Sporting tattoos and a man bow tie, Bloom makes an off-target comic attempt to rebrand himself as a Jason Statham-esque tough man, barking Dickensian cod lines in a mockingly cartoonish accent that will irritate many British viewers. Meanwhile, Malkovich takes another of those withering, aloof, borderline turns designed to let us know he's too good for such vulgar material. And yet he took the paycheck anyway.
Still, at least Douglas brings a shred of reliable old-school weight, even in this kind of late-career slum role, while Collette radiates scintillating androgynous antics with his peroxide punkette buzzcut and accent. English cut glass. At least someone is having fun with this pedestrian pulp exercise, which should have been a much more guilty pleasure than it turned out to be.
Comments
Post a Comment