First Hit: Albeit an overly complicated plot, it kept me wondering how it would turn out.
There isn’t much about this film that makes it good.
The complicated plot line: Was it about Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) and Mason (Luke Bracey)? Was it about how the CIA works? Was it about Devereaux and Alice (Olga Kurylenko)? Maybe it was about what being a CIA hit man deals with his/her life? Or was it about age and experience versus youth?
It could have been about Hanley (Bill Smitrovich) the head CIA operative and Devereaux, or was it about Arkady Federov (Lazar Ristovski) the guy trying to win a Russian Presidential election and Alice the girl he raped? There are a couple more I could have mentioned but the point being I never really understood what this film was about.
It is fine to have sub-plots and stories other than the main story, but the main story must be obvious to all – here it wasn’t. One things is for sure, there is a lot of shooting and a lot of bodies are given up for an unknown plot. What was good was Kurylenko’s Alice – she was engaging and created a believable character amongst the film’s lack of clarity.
Brosnan seemed OK but there were too many times that he looked like he was acting a character versus being the character. There was a separation of acting and being that, at times, seemed visible. Kurylenko was good and was fully engaged with her character. Bracey was pretty good as well as the young agent learning to make choices about his personal and professional life. Smitrovich was very strong as the CIA person only caring about his agenda and what he thinks the US should be doing. Amila Terzimehic was a great unemotional assassin. Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek wrote a confusing out of focus script. Roger Donaldson directed this with few highlights and mostly just adequate.
Overall: This will not be a memorable film and needed clarity of plot to work.