crazydrummer

Some good performances and a good story but it's let down by poor pacing and an almost complete lack of flair. It's feels like an 'action movie by numbers'. It doesn't have the charm of Kelly's Heroes, the dignity of The Guns of Navarone, the credibility of The Longest Day or the sheer star power and likeability of The Great Escape. If you're bored and want to watch Alan Ritchson play a Scandinavian Jack Reacher going on a nazi killing spree with the help of some friends then you might enjoy it. The fact that it's based on true events doesn't make it feel any more believable than any number of b-movie war films. It *could* have been great but it's a misfire. Perhaps a director who approached the subject more seriously would have had more success. Guy Ritchie seemed torn between doing a 'proper' war movie and doing his usual stylish blokey silliness, and the result is that this is neither.

The absolute worst thing about it is Rory Kinear who is horribly miscast as Winston Churchill. He's shocking. He looks nothing like him, despite mountains of prosthetics and he sounds like a northern comic doing a bad impression.

While Arnie and the rest of the cast are generally good, the production values are high, the concept and overall story idea is good, the show is completely sabotaged by the most uneven tone of any show I've watched recently. Four stars is generous.

It simply cannot decide if it's a silly almost spoof spy comedy or a serious action/drama. It's as if there were several writers who'd all been given a different brief and then their various segments of script were just pasted together.

One example of many: at one moment the two leads are mocking their therapist for being called Doctor Pepper in a straightforward comedic scene then the show gets serious and tries to show how sleeping with an enemy while on a mission in order to manipulate them would screw you up and damage your own relationships.

The ending of the final episode was also so ludicrously over the top silly and contrived it was an on screen begging letter for a second season.

I sincerely hope there isn't a second season. This needs to be put out of its misery. If, by some miracle there is, I won't be watching it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this film that a really terrific script doctor, better editing, better directing and better acting couldn't fix.

Guy Ritchie used to be a byword for slick, well paced, wittily scripted action capers. This appears to have been made while he was on powerful sedatives.

Hugh Grant wastes all his good work earning villain credentials in Paddington Two by turning in a performance so wooden you could have made a fairly sturdy table with it. His accent appears to be a piss poor Michael Caine knock off.

Jason Statham is...well he's Jason Statham. When he's hitting people he's really very good at it but when he's pretending to be a cultured man who loves the finer things in life he's about as convincing as Michael Fabricant's wig.

Aubrey Plaza looks like a woman who is absolutely going to fire her agent for getting her involved in this clunker. Given that she's best known for delivering deadpan sarcasm it's curious that she's given almost no deadpan sarcasm to deliver and the 'funny' lines she does get are so very lame they need crutches.

Cary Elwes is wasted. Completely.

Josh Hartnett plays a pound-land Tom Cruise. I'm not sure that was the intention but that how it comes across.

Bugzy Malone. Who?

The plot, the tech and the McGuffin are illogical and unrealistic. The ending is confusing anticlimactic drivel.

If you have 2 hours spare for pity's sake PLEASE watch something for else.

If you do watch this don't say you weren't warned.