Look, I really wanted to like this. I thought the abhorrent amount hate this film is getting was a residual effect of people just hating the MCU lately, but alas, this film isn’t good. I really enjoyed what The Russos did with their MCU entries. Each of the four films they directed are seriously great films, and more importantly, they’re incredible action films. So going into this I was really excited to see a pure action film from The Russos with a huge budget and a stellar cast, and conceptually the film is interesting.
It’s another generic action film plot but layered with more deceit and blurred lines, putting a lot of the characters in the grey. The action set pieces, on concept alone, are really fun. There’s a whole action sequence that plays out in Prague that puts, the heroes, villains and police simultaneously against each other while also destroying the city with pure chaotic action. But good god, the action scenes are at times disgusting to look at.
They’re some of the worst directed action scenes I’ve seen recently. The scenes are shot so poorly, there’s an abundance of awful looking drone shots that just don’t need to be there, and the editing in this film is just beyond horrific. When you’re sitting down to watch the action scenes you’re aware that what’s happening is cool but due to them being so awfully shot and edited, the audience has no spacial awareness of anything that’s going on. It becomes incredibly hard to follow and honestly it gets boring and tiresome cause you can’t enjoy anything of the massive set pieces that’s happening. It gets slightly better when the action becomes more tactile but just barely.
The saving grace of this film is Chris “The Stache” Evans. I adore this man. He’s electric in this film. He’s a pure campy, stupid, moustache twirling villain and he plays it to perfection, by not taking it so seriously. Between this and Knives Out, I hope we get more Chris Evans playing villains cause he does it so well.
The concept could’ve elevated this to be one of the better generic action flicks, but the actual writing and awful visuals bring this down, making it worse than most of the action films to come out recently. If anything this film just increases my respect for Christopher McQuarrie. Seriously though, where did the $200 million budget go? This is Netflix’s most expensive film ever, yet there’s plenty of action films that have done a better job with a fraction of the budget, and honestly I think that would’ve helped this film grey-tely.
★1/2
