"That's not who I am. That's what I've done. And I can do something else." - Danny
"A war isn't over till both sides say it is." - Sheikh, then Danny
"Killing is easy. Living with it is the hard part." - Danny - only applies to honorable souls.
"Game's over." "Everybody gets found." - Hunter
"I don't care about the past. I care about now." - Anne
Arab Sheikh takes Hunter (Robert De Niro) hostage to force special-ops Danny (Jason Statham) out of one-year retirement in Australia. Flashbacks show he's getting close to happy with a gorgeous childhood pal outback farmer Anne (Yvonne Strahovski, love the accent unlike Yank TV Chuck's Sarah). Backed by two shady former team-mates, Elvis-style Davies (unrecognizable Dominic Purcell) and Natzi-look Meier (Aden Young), the job is to get confessions and, in "accidents", take down their own, three British SAS (Special Air Forces) heroes who were ordered against three royal princes. Spike (Clive Owen - dons bifocals and obviously dyed black hair) is on his tail, but there's a fishy committee of grey-haired suits behind the scenes, and a hint from the first victim that the real plot concerns the real perpetrator(s) and an imminent tell-all book. I wish they could've stopped the first hand-to-glass shards conflict for a chat and cooperate to fake the deaths and take down the ones giving orders. Based on 1991 officially-denied maybe-true story of "The Feather Men" (with "light touch") by Ranulph Fiennes, whose name/character is in the film. Trailer
My favorite lines are funny:
"You don't trust that snake do you ? He's lying." - Davies
"Yeah? How do you know?" - Danny
"His lips were moving."
"Relax. I only killed the car." - Hunter
(Spoilers:
Danny doesn't want to do the job, and the last surviving spoiled Anglophile son (Ben Mendelsohn, disappointed over no stunts) doesn't want to go back to the desert, despite his father's six-months-left fatal illness. At the end when Statham and Owen both find out who set them up, they still don't cooperate. Only at the final scene do we get the last names "Brice and Frazer".)
Special Features:
Interviews with 7 stars, 6 crew (director, producers, and key make-up) are brief pithy answers between annoying plaudits. I knew the hair, glasses, other elements were out of place, but I didn't twig the time was 1980s until here.
13 Deleted Scenes
Some make no context without intros, didn't know how important they were until I missed them. Good reasons for leaving most bits out; I might have kept 3 and 10. Guess by descriptive titles which have excess violence, which slow momentum, which great trees:
1 Take our card 2 Inside the box, 3 It's just work, 3 It's goint to take some time 5 Knife throwing 6 Sugar packet 7 He had it coming 8 You just can't give it up 9 One for the road 10 It was an ambush 11 The real world 12 The roof is on fire 13 Shipping dock
Previews:
"The Grey" Liam Neeson fighter, sharp metal knuckles, in snow
"The Rum Diary" Johnny Depp 1950s Puerto Rico drunk reporter hallucinates
"Dream House" Daniel Craig haunted house horror
"Shark Night" summer lake vacation horror
No comments:
Post a Comment