Operation: Endgame

Every now and then there comes a movie that makes me want to write a review on; just to do the world a favor and help people save their money and time.

Do not bother with this one. It's got a good cast which tricked me into watching it. But when you take a good cast and hand it over to a developmentally retarded director, you get a movie called 'Operation endgame' The director clearly didn't know what he wanted. It was a wannabe comedy mixed with a wannabe action flick, that has no humor, little action and a wee bit of gore. It was a mess. It was so bad, that i don't even want to finish this review.

so i'll make it very simple; acting - bad, character development - there WAS none! cohesiveness - wasn't there, action - OK i suppose, comedy - bad, script - bad, plot - wtf?! overall - 2/10; only because i'm a nice guy:)

Somewhere beneath Washington, D.C., an intense rivalry is heating up between two opposing teams of government assassins. The hired killers in the organizations take their names from Tarot cards. The Fool (Joe Anderson) is the latest recruit. Reporting for his first day on the job, The Fool is shocked to find that his boss is dead, and the office is on lockdown. To make matters worse, the building has been rigged with explosives, and it's going to blow soon. Now, in order to get out alive, The Fool will have to root out the killer in his midst, and make a quick escape before his co-workers catch him in their crosshairs.

Operation Endgame, a satirical workplace comedy with a slick action twist is not without it's flaws. The plot is convoluted, most of the dialog is incredibly silly and the whole thing isn't that funny. Having said that, the film is damn entertaining. The cast is composed, among others, by Zach Galifianakis, Emilie de Ravin, Maggie Q, Rob Corddry, Ellen Barkin,Bob Odenkirk, Ving Rhames. There's plenty of star power here but, while some of the actors were delightful, others were completely underused. Being a battle royale of sorts, the deaths kept piling up and therefor some brilliant actors like Bob Odenkirk (who has been phenomenal in the TV show Breaking Bad) had very little screen time.

In the end, it's all about what you're expecting. Operation Endgame is no Oscar contender. This is mindless fun with a bit of action and gore in the middle and the film clearly doesn't take itself too serious and in my opinion it succeeded in what it intended to do which is, to entertain.

6/10

When I sat down to watch "Operation: Endgame" (aka "Rogues Gallery") I had no idea at all what the movie was about. The reason why I wanted to watch it was because of the people on the cast list.

I found out that this was an action comedy, although I will admit that the movie is more lenient towards the action as it towards comedy. The comedy is there, yes, but it is fairly subtle but straight to the point.

The story is about a group of government assassins who work in a secret underground compound. The assassins are known only by the names from the Tarot card deck. And when new assassin, The Fool, arrives for his first work day, the boss of the operation is killed and operation: endgame is initiated, giving the assassins only limited time to escape the compound. But some assassins have been given secret targets to kill, and with nowhere to run, whom can you trust? I will say that the storyline was entertaining, albeit a bit silly.

There is nothing in the movie to make you buy into it, and as such it does come off as a comedy on the action genre. The storyline is simplistic and easy to follow, requiring you to disable your brain and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Although working with fairly two-dimensional characters, there was an impressive list of people to be found on the cast list here.

For a comedy, then "Operation: Endgame" didn't really deliver that much impact, and if you enjoy these type of covert government operation comedies, then there are some better choices available. But still, "Operation: Endgame" is worth a watch for about 87 minutes worth of entertainment that doesn't require you to bring along your brain.

I am gonna explain what i wanna write with a metaphor.

If any of you has ever cooked from a cookbook before you will be sure to come across a recipe wherein you'll say to yourself 'that amount of salt can't be good' OR 'this much paprika...what do you wanna do? gimme an ulcer?!' OR 'that kinda butter is gonna give me a potbelly!'. So you adjust the ingredients, maybe even add a few of your own thinking you are gonna make the recipe your own, and then you find out the dish turned out bland and could have done without your own twists. It needed only those ingredients and in the quantity mentioned in the recipe to make it work.

I guess you get my point. When i came across the trailer it seemed to be a satirical action comedy with lots of gore to boot. And given the cast, it screamed awesome mindless fun.

But i guess the director decided that he needed to 'adjust the ingredients', maybe to make it his own style rather than a formulaic one. Well, sir, sometimes the formula is all that is needed. The action lacked the punch. There was blood and gore, yes, but the scene would cut to those 2 guys in 'corporate' making puking faces just when you though you are gonna see something really gross. The dialog, or rather the delivery, was sporadic at best - too rehearsed - almost like a B-movie. The action was badly choreographed and the camera angle shifted too many times for it to be smooth and coherent.

The premise of the movie couldn't be faulted though. Neither could the setting. Assassins having office-like cubicles and killing each other with office equipment is a cool idea. If only it could have been executed better.

I did not expect there to be a plot, and so the plot-twist at the end that tried to give some serious patriotic theme to the movie just felt 'bleh'. In fact, it did not make any sense at all.

Oh, if only the director had just stuck to the formula of max action, max gore and max comedy, then the premise and the actors themselves would have make this one a hit! Too bad!!

I watched this movie purely for Emilie De Ravin as Hierophant, but let me tell you, I was pleasantly amused! I'm not a big fan of violent comedies, but if you view this as more or less an assassin parody, it's a million times better. What really makes it is the security men up watching them all kill each other and reacting the same way I did, complete with shouts of "GET HIM!" and gagging. The cast is fun, the script expectantly awful in all the right ways, but this is NOT a movie to take seriously. Watch it when you have nothing better to do and have a good laugh. The twists and turns are fun and the score is pretty easy listening as well.