Take Cover

As usual, Scott Adkins is as good as it gets. But when you have a terrible script, two likable actors in the lead are wasted in silly, inane, predictable style. He is 10 times the actor and the martial artist that jvcd ever was. But for reasons I cannot explain, he gets stuck in b minus movies like these. Most of the movie takes place at the penthouse of a hotel room where they duck behind a sofa for cover,. Yes a sofa which has bullet holes through it as if a sniper couldn't just pepper it and kill everyone and end the movie.

Accident man is one of Atkins best including avengement. Stick with those, skip this..

It is not like it is some great story, but it is decent enough. I am not saying more, because I do not want to spoil. It is true, though, that the script is terrible - the conversations! Just awful. The characters are not that bad, it is all in the conversations.

You won't see the best of Scott Adkins' fighting, but that is not the idea, as he is supposed to be differently skilled. And the situation he and his teammate got stuck in is a good idea. So overall, I am rating the movie six stars, which is ok on my scale, as five and below is bad to worst. And to be honest, I think there are worse action movies (and movies overall) being on cinema, pretending that they aren't crap.

Professional mercenary sniper Sam Lorde (Scott Adkins) finds himself in the middle of an existential crisis when he accidentally kills an innocent who throws herself in front of his intended victim. He contacts his remote boss and tells her he wants to leave the business. The boss is very disappointed but books him and his spotter Ken (Jack Parr) into a posh hotel where she'll meet them to go through formalities. However, someone else knows they are there and they are out for vengeance... Right let's say the good things first. By the end of the film, it's quite feel good and you've enjoyed a convoluted story. I very much liked the performance of Madalina Bellariu Ion who plays call girl Mona. Perhaps the best performance of the entire film.

Right, the dogs ears...the script is truly awful. The non stop pseudo-hateful banter between Sam and Ken is acutely badly written and sounds as fake as it is. Fight scenes are pretty poor. Acting is pretty poor. Verbalised emotions are half felt and not explored properly. There are so many plot holes it borders on ridiculous, and there's too much melodrama from poor actors.

Having said all of that the story while not new at all, isn't bad. If this film had great actors and a top end director it probably would have been pretty good. As it was it wasn't dire, it just wasn't very well produced or directed in so many ways. I have had a very tasty and enjoyable dinner so I am in a great mood and I give it a 5.

For the record, I am a fan. I have an Adkins film on my list of all-best movies, a claim few other reviewers can make. But, at the same time, I have been outspoken in my view that, since his Boyka films, he has not really found an outlet to best showcase his talent. TAKE COVER 2024 changes all that. Writer Joshua Todd James has cleverly turned a hi-rise apartment into a killbox, showing once again how a limited set does not have be a disadvantage. Properly done, the suspense becomes palpable. The script cleverly pushes the "turnabout" trope -- Adkins's being targeted by a faraway shooter works well because, in the story, he himself is also a sniper. Clever! There is a lot of action and tension in Take Cover, and many of Adkins' special skills are effectively deployed for the first time in quite a while. Recommended. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

This was pretty poor. It looks like a made for TV movie, that wouldn't even had made it to the VHS bargain bin back in the day.

The acting is lame. The script is atrocious which attempts to play somewhere between a Ryan Reynolds 'action comedy' and an epicly poor Tarantino action thriller.

Adkins colleague is very bad indeed. The action sequences are very poor.

I'd strongly recommend that you give this a wide berth. It's one of those films where you really wish that you can't unsee it, or feel bad about the amount of time that you lost watching it. I had to turn it off at about 35 minutes just during the flat fight sequence. I wish I'd given it up sooner.