Sezione 8

An unrustling narrative, devoid of any worthy substance, relying on the expected norms of the genre, bringing nothing new, or original to the screen.

Packed up with the fight, war, and action celebrities, missing Arnold or Sylvester-type charismatic and charming characters, makes the hole thing a bore.

The film starts with an unrealistic fight sceen from Afghanistan where the Afghan soldiers speak in the middle eastern dialect, instead of the Afgan Arabic. The US moves into the neighborhood knowing it's a setup, in humvees with all windows open letting the fresh air and bullets in. Ultimately, getting many killed.

Usually, viewers find predictability in scenarios where many other films explored the same thing with a number of similar outcomes. This is one of those you will say I knew this was going to happen.

I'm giving this a 4 to be generous to the cast and production crew. Excellent job as usual.

In fact everything about this story is the usual: a military acquaintance; a plot that becomes more senseless each scene; long, long flashbacks to show the hero's emotions; hand-to-hand attacks during gunfights;and plot inconsistencies that give the impression that a producer's 15-year-old son wrote a script and Dad decided to encourage him... and had the bucks.

Verdict: AVOID. Despite the cast and production quality, I found this movie completely forgettable and an unfortunate waste of time, even though I fast-forwarded through all the my-dead-wife-and-kid-poor-me scenes.

I was sure about giving 5 stars until the last third of the movie. This is a very old-fashioned action movie, peppered with geil emotions and shows some artistic blend. In the '80s, this would have been a very good movie. In the '90s, it would still compete with some good Steven Segal and van Damme movies. But we are in 2022. Dolph Lundgren and poor Mickey Rourke should already stay away from cinema... but I guess they still live in the '90s at heart.

There are a couple of big plot-holes, and there are a few silly moments. E.g. If one is out of bullets, then just gets in the car to take a long trip, how come that when gets out of the car, the magazine is again full?

Or: you sit in the Toyota to catch the bad guy who just left with his GMC. And you just literally have two red wires hanging out underneath the dashboard, so within a few seconds you already have a running car. You don't even need the ignition key with the radio chip that is needed for a Toyota to communicate wirelessly with the onboard CPU to start the car (the so-called anti-theft system).

This movie would have worked in the '80s but not in 2022, sorry.

So in conclusion: There was some potential in this movie, there were some good watchable parts in it. There were some plot twists, yes. And the lead actor is quite good. Really. He did a great job, and would deserve something better in the future.

But the rest of the actors were really bad. The whole story is a big cliché that you must have seen several times.

My conclusion is that you don't lose anything if you don't watch it. This movie is a grain of salt less than entertaining.

The main character is fairly good, probably the best part of the film.

The action parts are lacking, but the amount of killing makes up for it :) a few good scenes with Scott Adkins, he always brings his A game. I think people expect too much, but a movie with those actors really can't be great, there are too many flashback scenes, even though they're short it's really getting annoying seeing the same flashbacks over & over, we got it, the guy had a family & it the base for the entire premise, but give us a break already.

Mostly I enjoyed it, laughed at it a few times. Why low scores which this movie don't deserve? I give it a 6.5.

Beware: NOT a Mickey Rourke movie. NOT a Dolph Lundgren movie. NOT a Scott Adkins movie. Why not? Because they only have a few minutes of screentime.

Scott Adkins and Dolph Lundgren produced this movie, with (unfortunately) disastrous results.

I really love a good old fashioned action B-movie and I really like these old, tough action movie stars like Mickey Rourke and Scott Adkins.

But this movie is partly a sentimental movie about family bonds, partly an action movie. And it fails at being both.

If they only had stuck to a 100% action movie and IF they had replaced the leading (unknown) actor with one of the other great actors (Mickey Rourke, Scott Adkins) then this movie would have some merit for the B-movie action fan. Now it turned into a terrible, sentimental dreck of failure.

Mickey Rourke and Scott Adkins deserve to star in better movies than this one. Come on guys, you all rock. Now get together again and give us fans something we can really enjoy!