I was not aware about this movie till I saw its trailer more than a week ago in the cinema. It did not look like an amazing action film, but there was no other new movie released in the theater that interest me. So I decided to give it a try last night by myself (as usual I would leave my wife out of this kind of movie in case it was not a great experience). All right then, I'll get to it.

Brief Story Line

When few journalists in European countries were getting killed presumably by CIA, Kate (Nina Dobrev - The Out-laws, Flatliners 2017 remake etc) a desk agent who was analyzing data found the involvement of a former operative Radek (Clifton Collins Jr. - The Last Castle, Westworld TV series etc) and informed her superior O'Malley (Tim Blake Nelson - Watchmen TV series, Colossal etc).

O'Malley decided to enlist the help from retired agent Vail (Aaron Eckhart - Line of Duty, Thank You for Smoking etc) who knew Radek best. Though he rejected it at first, but Vail later decided to cooperate with the CIA while assisted by the inexperience Kate.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Frankly when I began watching this movie, I was a bit skeptical whether this would be entertaining enough, especially the start did not exactly provide confidence. Even when the lead cast appeared, I was not really excited yet. Only when there was action that I started to enjoy the movie where Aaron Eckhart showed his agility and capability in doing the fight scenes. Plus it was brutal and quite well executed that justified its 17+ rating in Indonesia (and R rating in the US).

Anyway, subsequently the story moved in a steady pace combined with quite frequent fight scenes that were fun to see. However, aside from the fights, the film did not offer anything interesting on the spy world. The investigation done by Vail aka the Bricklayer (it would be explained in the movie why he was called such), was standard. But the main problem for me was the characters who were simply not interesting enough. From Kate who was sadly useless to my opinion, to the villain Radek who did not ooze bad guy vibe, the unconvincing CIA agent O'Malley and the lifeless support characters like Chief Station Tye Delson (Ilfenesh Hadera - Baywatch movie, Godfather of Harlem TV series etc) & Vail's friend Patricio (Oliver Trevena).

I read that this movie was supposed to be starring Gerard Butler as Vail but not sure why he was replaced by Aaron Eckhart, although Butler remained as the producer. Now I have nothing against Eckhart and he tried his best to perform in this role, but I think Butler has a bigger star power and I could not help thinking that maybe if it was still him as the lead character, the movie would be more enjoyable. Oh, the film was directed by Renny Harlin who was experienced in directing action films like The Long Kiss Goodnight, Skiptrace and some others which would explain the nicely done action sequence. It has pretty long duration of 1 hour 50 minutes without any mid or post end credit scene.

In the closing credits, I noticed that the film was based on novel of the same title. It was released in 2010 by Paul Lindsay using his pen name Noah Boyd. I have not read the book yet but after finding out more, I think this film was just inspired by the character and unfortunately it seemed the novel was way more interesting. To my surprise though, the movie gotten a mixed review from critics so I guessed some were still appreciative of it. For me, this movie was OK in term of the action but the lack of interesting characters made me enjoy it a bit less. So if you want to see Aaron Eckhart kick ass, then you might be entertained by this, but do not expect anything more especially awesome story. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars