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Luc Besson delivers again, unfortunately. A film like something out of a microwave: tough, lukewarm, and overcooked. Jet Li plays a kind of fighting dog in a human body, mentally somewhere between a toddler and Karate Tommy. The emotional spectrum remains predictable: eyes open, eyes closed. Bob Hoskins is the only one who knows what he's doing. You're almost grateful that he takes this garbage seriously. Morgan Freeman sits as a blind man at the piano and looks like he hasn't even watched himself act. The plot is thin, the characters seem like casting remnants from other Besson productions. Anyone who found "Léon" borderline will definitely give up on this one. There's action, sure - but you could just as easily watch it as a YouTube clip and skip the rest. 4 out of 10. Three of them for Hoskins, one out of pity.

The five stars are for the opening naval battle. Ships always work, even if here they look like they're from a mediocre strategy game from 2012. The water shimmers artificially, the waves dance to a digital algorithm, and in the middle of it all, there are actors who look as if they were photoshopped into the frame. Everything seems polished, sterile, and digital. As a result, the atmosphere is completely absent. The magnificent memory of Ridley Scott's first installment of the sandal epic gives way to a generic pixel storm with portentous music and meaningless faces. The plot plods along as expected, no surprises, no friction, just grand gestures in artificial light. Anyone who liked the first installment will at best find this one tiresome.

Cast Mark Wahlberg as a bad-tempered pilot and you get a clichéd tough guy with a dark past that lacks any real depth but instead has a lot of stupid one-liners to tell. Put Mel Gibson in the director's chair and you get a thriller that is unintentional cabaret. The film either bores you or blasts its way through 90 minutes, while you repeatedly wonder if there is any more suspense around the corner. The plot is so simple that you could send it in a text message. You can see the twists and turns ten minutes in advance. The dialogue, which is embarrassingly edited to sound cool, makes Wahlberg look like he abandoned his charm on the first day of shooting. The supporting characters probably only exist for contractual reasons. And the supposedly cool one-liners are reminiscent of badly dubbed files from the 70s. 4 stars for the realization after watching it: You could have done something better with your time.