The Bricklayer

I went to see it because of the name of the great actor Aaron Eckhart on the bill. Contrary to many others, I do still really appreciate many of his latest movies, but this is definitely not one of them...

The bad: Aaron Eckhart does a good job at acting, it's not his fault this movie flopped, but his opposing leading actress has got ZERO charisma or chemistry. Who decided to cast her? She acts like she walked straight of the set of a cheap television soap series. A total nobody.

This whole movie has got a cheap look and feel. But let's forget about all that for a moment, the only crucial question left is: has it got riveting action or suspenseful plot turns. NO!

Aaron Eckhart fans be warned, he does still act well, but this movie is quite a tedious dread to watch.

The film is still running through my mind. While I enjoyed the film, the director used every bloody cliche in the book. Setting scenes to give the viewers a comparison impression between James Bond, and The Bricklayer. You might almost thinking they were trying to create a "Brand" so that there could be future Bricklayer films. Transparent hopes of more, when the film has so many flaws may be doomed to disappointment. Many of the scenes also had actors either posing for the scene, or either looking at the camera, or every other way except at the camera. Some of them near broke their necks avoiding looking at the camera, even when they were in very abnormal postures. The film editing was sloppy, even when a better edit would have avoided revealing the more obvious flaws.

Action movie with average cast, good photography, great stunts, unusual location (Thessaloniki, Greece), good music and some nice dialogue (here and there).

Script, alas, had some really annoying aspects... for example: who would like to watch a man in his 50s, alone, defeating with his bare hands 30 thugs, most of them armed, one after the other, in a same scene?

Movie reality is cinematic, ok... but there are rules nonetheless: I'd say that 2 thugs should be the edge of 'realism', up to 5 you must be funny, plausible and it remains however debatable, 6 is reserved for James Bond and higher figures definitely require superheroes.

Another (violated) rule of mine says that a thug easily defeated in a previous scene cannot have such a come back and beat you to a pulp in a following sequence... anyway... that said, it was not boring: I reached the end titles in good spirits and it made me kill some time.

And I always liked Aaron Eckhart.

Enjoy.

This should have been much better, good cast, decent acting, but badly put together, and with the Worst sound staging I've ever heard in a "proper" movie ..

Very much a tale of 2 halves, the production, and production values are fine, top tier as you would expect from a seasoned cast & production...

But then when it came to the post production editing/sound boarding and the nuts & bolts of putting something like this together, it was rushed and thrown out the door... Studio problems, a Hard deadline, I dunno, but it was done very poorly, imagine doing a job for the first time, once it's done your proud and happy of what you made, then years down the line, once you've really learned your craft, you look back at it and can't believe how bad a job you did compared to how you would do it today...

That's how I felt watching this.... Started by a top dollar production company, then put out the door by the local youth club...

It's genuinely interesting to watch just for the flaws, and to try to figure out where it went pear shaped ......

Former CIA operative Victor Radek (Clifton Collins Jr.) is killing European civilians opposed to America with incriminating evidence on the CIA. The publicity is destroying America's reputation. CIA analyst Kate Bannon (Nina Dobrev) uncovers Radek's identity and tells CIA Director O'Malley (Tim Blake Nelson). With so much possible blow-back, he assigns veteran operative Steve Vail (Aaron Eckhart) and Kate to take down Radek in an off-the-books operation.

In the old days, this is a mid-tier action thriller with some mid-tier actors. The story is basic at best. Quite frankly, I don't like Radek's scheme. There has to be a better way to get his revenge. There isn't much in terms of twists and turns. There is one shock reveal, but nobody cares about that by then. The production value is passable with some functional action. There are some minor plot holes and inconsistencies. For example, Vail takes down a dozen thugs in a club, but the next night, he struggles to take down one of those thugs in a fair fight. The movie doesn't seem to know what it is. This is a marginal film that will be lost in the stream.