Final Score

Good story, great directing, decent action, perfect length and pace, adequate humor - most of the time, and mainly good acting, although Bautsita should have shown better combat fighting instead of sorrowful sighs when getting hit. And the chicken and life story conversation with Brosnan whilst his daughter was caught was a little lame. A fun lazy-day watch nevertheless. It's a 7/10 from me.

"Final Score" is exactly what you expect it to be, and a bit more. The story is tight and simple, and the pace of action is fast. The idea of taking hostage a whole stadium of football fans is both current and real. In fact, making a film about it might seem as a safety valve as it will hopefully discourage anyone wanting to implement such a plan.

The added quality of the film is Amit Shah as Faisal, a bit clumsy, but extremely nice chap. He makes a fantastic Laurel to Dave Bautista's Hardy. That is if you take the film tongue-in-cheek. Bautista is, however, well cast. He's a charming big man with enough authority to convince the audience (and Ray Stevenson's villainous character!) that you don't mess with former US Army men.

Pierce Brosnan, fully bearded for "The Son", has a cameo role. It's always nice to see a household name supporting small films like this. Enjoy.

As a Briton, after seeing the trailer for this, I thought it'd be brilliant to see a bunch of football fans blown up. So I watched it the day it was released. I'm also a Drax fan, played by Dave Bautista, who also headlines this movie as a humble-but-hard ex-Army soldier visiting the UK to see his niece and sister-in-law. His brother died in action. The movie is reminiscent of Die Hard, and also Sudden Impact, of course, which it was clearly inspired by (to his credit, and no surprise, Dave Bautista is as enjoyable a lead as prime-era JCVD). I liked his sidekick, a wimpy Brixton-born Arab, who at the beginning of the film an old woman assumes is a terrorist (there is a great 2-in-a-row pay-off to this scene near the end of the film). In the last 10 mins, the story has a few implausible beats (mostly after the end result of the terrorist's actions), I think the screenwriters had written the main action of the film, and resorted to 'the numbers' in wrapping up, but I liked it, it was better than you'd expect. There is a bike chase sequence where I would've chosen subtly different shots, but the Director is quite good overall. Also, for Brits, look out for the Irish-accented supporting role by a star of the British "Shameless"! For Americans, for Brits, for soccer fans world-wide, watch this film. It's pretty great overall, given it's modest budget of $20 million - they got a lot for their money. May Dave Bautista do more British productions...

Action films are often a bit far-fetched, but are we really supposed to believe that West Ham reached the European Cup Semi Final?

Not sure why this movie is getting the hate. It does not pretend to be anything but a fun, entertaining die hard type movie.

Grab the snacks and enjoy some, British humour, fun fight scenes, silly stunts.