6 Days

This film really surprised me given the negative reviews. It strikes the right balance between tension, build up and ultimately the final decisive action sequence.

Mark Strong is a stand out performer in a great cast.

Definitely worth a watch.

It's 1980 London. After the Iranian revolution, armed men invade the Iranian embassy. They demand for their Arab comrades' release. Max Vernon (Mark Strong) is the lead police negotiator. Kate Adie (Abbie Cornish) is the BBC reporter. Rusty Firmin (Jamie Bell) leads a team of SAS soldiers on a rescue mission.

It's a fine retelling of the true events. I sorta remember the incident. Mostly, I remember the outside with masked men breaking in during the rescue. This lays out the sequence of events. It's not overly-dramatic. The most exciting section is the rescue with all of its problems. The acting is strong. The plot is straight forward and the title leaves nothing to chance. There are no surprises. Six stars for six days.

I was somehow shocked when I saw the ratings this movie got. Sure, this movie will not win big awards, or anything like that. But I actually truly enjoyed this picture, as an interesting movie about a historical fact that I didn't really know about due to my young age.

The movie doesn't lose time on futile details. It's an honest depiction of what happened over those six days. It starts immediately with the hostage. The movie feels genuine, and not meant as a brutal action movie.

Keeping details true to the facts is of course a good thing. But somewhere on the line, they forgot about character development. There were some key characters, but without being really key characters. You could feel they were somehow important to the story, but you never really got a back story on them. The best example is the woman of the BBC. I didn't grew up in the UK, so I never heard of her. After the movie ended, they explained who she was. I think they could have done a lot more with the characters. You just didn't feel an attachment to any of the characters. Same with the terrorists and the negotiator.

To be fair, it's not easy to do all this in just 1 hour and half. I genuine feel this movie needed some more screen time. If you enjoy movies based on true stories or historical events, you won't be disappointed.

The film had lots of potential but in the end was not perfect. There were strong characters in the real life drama. In most cases the actors were excellent and very convincing. One of the important characters is the award winning BBC journalist Kate Adie. Unfortunately Abbie Cornish did not have a convincing accent and did not portray Adie in the correct standing. It was a chance to highlight Kate Adie's groundbreaking journalist work for British TV. Unfortunately Abbie Cornish's casting spoiled the film for me.

3/19/18. A docudrama of the 1980 Siege of London's Iranian Embassy by terrorists, taking everyone inside as hostages. When the frustrated terrorists felt like they weren't getting the response they wanted from the British government, they made the mistake of killing a hostage and tossing the body out of the embassy. The British government brought in the SAS (Special Air Service) to extract the rest of the hostages. And, SAS did just that will minimal collateral damage. This set the tone for Britain's response to any terrorist attack since then. A suspenseful movie worth watching and cathartic for anyone who has ever felt terrorists have taken away the peace of mind we expect in a civilized world.