The style outshines the substance in this enjoyable but forgettable Netflix movie.
What keeps the bland story from falling flat is that the main two characters are pretty likable. Tyler Rake (as if we are going to call him anything but Chris Hemsworth) doesn't have much to his personality, but he is simply quite cool thanks to Chris Hemsworth's natural charm. He may not be a character who film buffs could discuss to much length or one that especially stands out among the great action hero characters, but the point is we like him and root for him. Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) provides us with the movie's strongest emotional center and even if the story is slight and cliché, I couldn't help but feel sorry for this poor kid. Helping out is that Hemsworth and Jaiswal have excellent chemistry together.
The action scenes are for the most part very good. They are fast paced, violent and all together fun. They are well shot and staged and truly give action fans all they could want from this type of a movie. The climactic action scene is excellent and quite intense and action fans will love it.
However the well done action scenes and good performance can't help this movie overcome its most problematic fault. That is that it really drags in the middle. As much as I enjoyed how this movie started and how it ended, I admit my mind kind of drifted towards the middle as I got a little bored as the film began to feel too repetitive and its faults became more apparent. Luckily the film rectified this as it went along by topping what it had done before with a fantastic climax. Perhaps this film could have worked better at an hour and a half instead of the near two hour running time it has. The story was pretty minor and the more repetitive and bland parts could have been worked out with the simplistic story still making sense.
This movie tries to be a John Wick film, but it simply falls quite short of that goal. Still with all its faults it is worth watching for the charisma of the two main actors and a really fun climatic action scene.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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