Ambush

Although the movie is just a few minutes short, it still is more adrenaline pumping than as for instance "The Fast and the Furious".

The movie is a great beginning of "The Hire" series! The car chase is well directed by John Frankenheimer who already showed with the movie "Ronin" how well he can direct scene's like that. The story is written by Andrew Kevin Walker ("Se7en", "Sleepy Hollow"), produced by David Fincher (director of "Se7en", "The Game", "Panic Room", "Fight Club") and the cinematography is from action specialist Newton Thomas Sigel. So there was lots of talent involved in making this short film and that is really notable. You can clearly see it had been made with lots of profession.

Clive Owen is perfect as The Driver. For some reason he is boring but cool at the same time. I most certainly wouldn't had mind seeing him be the new James Bond but it looks like that honor is going to someone else for the moment. The passenger is played by Tomas Milian who is best known for his role in "Traffic" and some smaller roles in "Amistad" and "JFK".

A very nice short with some excellent action in the car chase!

7/10

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This basically sums up the film in general, but I will elaborate.

The Plot: Clive Owen ( before he was in "The Bourne Identity," "King Arthur," "Elisabeth: The Golden Age," and "Sin CIty" ) plays a "hire" who drives people places they desperately need to go.

Often times, they are working for something "top secret" and can only give our protagonist limited information.

Also, this is meant to show off the BMW car and is executive-produced by Tony Scott ( Crimson Tide, Spy Game ), Ridley Scott ( Alien, Kingdom of Heaven ) and David Fincher ( Panic Room, Alien 3 ).

In this episode directed by the late John Frankenheimer, our hero has to transport a con who has something his mob friends want.

Leave it to BMW to create a promotional DVD of shorts ("The Hire")featuring their cars. The directors list is stunning: Frankenheimer, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-Wai, Guy Ritchie, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. The range of the shorts go from the giddy (Ritchie) to the vainglorious (Inarritu), yet all are entertaining. From a strictly commercial sense, the efforts put forth by Frankenheimer and Ritchie present the best balance of entertainment and product endorsement. Basic plot, great stunt drivers, fast paced sound track, tongue in cheek humor. Perhaps a better representation of advertising, than great short films, "Ambush" et al were first made available over the Internet through BMW Films.com. Frankenheimer will soon resurrect "The Exorcist" saga with fellow short film writer/actor William Wisher. One can't help but to think that this little short was a safe promotional boost after the highly disappointing "Reindeer Games". All in all, not a bad way to spend fifteen minutes.

John Frankenheimer was hired for this probably due the impressive car chases he filmed for RONIN rather than the last film he did the mediocre REINDEER GAMES. Fortunately he's in top form for this short film. In a mere 6 minutes we get an lean, mean vignette about how Clive Owen, as an unnamed driver-for-hire, does his best to escape from a van full of masked gunmen out to kidnap and kill the driver's passenger: a diamond smuggler who swallowed his precious cargo. While later films in the BMW series would get more ambitious in scope, it's AMBUSH that lays the groundwork for the later films to work from.

The film's style and approach to action is hard-edged, the actual car chase is exciting, and Clive Owen gives a sense of man who gets out of dangerous situations by a mixture of complete professionalism and ruthless self-interest. Only in later films do we begin to see a more human side to his character.

This is the first in a series of eight BMW films called The Hire. This one isn't bad. The entire short is basically one car chase. But the reason for the chase is interesting, and there's just enough action to bring it to above average status. Plus I like Clive Owen, so that's a plus.

Bottom Line: Short and sweet, maybe not great but worth a watch.

There really isn't much more to say but IMDb wants me to fill up 10 lines, so I'm writing this sentence in hopes of filling it up, okay I'm done.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to a 7 for IMDb