A well rounded 90-minute movie with tight writing. A bomb threat for basically the entire first half of the film makes for edge of your seat stuff.

There’s a heavy reliance on the audience knowing basic action movie protocols for inference so that the movie doesn’t have to muck around too much describing locations or plot.

Could this be the mandatory informal Bond audition for Theo James? James has been widely speculated to be one of the leading candidates for the role of the next Bond. Daniel Craig did it when he played a steely resolved drug dealer who is forced to get his hands dirty in Layer Cake and it was that performance that allegedly assisted in convincing the Bond franchise producers he was suitably suave for the role.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson put on an impressive show as an army major bomb disposal officer. The man is really suited for those types of roles. Johnson is another frontrunner for Bond, which makes it ironic that he and Theo James face-off in this film.

Sam Worthington stars in another 90-minute masterpiece [see The Titan (2018)] delivering a good performance as a tough-guy accomplice and letting a dark silence do most of his talking.

Some of the in fighting and twists amongst the people who pulled the heist was reminiscent of the 2018 movie Den of Thieves and also the iconic opening of the second film in the trilogy of Christopher Nolan’s additions to the monolithic Batman canon The Dark Knight.

Overall a good movie, granted there are a few bizarre twists towards the end to neatly tie the characters together and put a bow on the film.

A “thank you” to Harry Poland for sending this review to The Upper Hutt Connection.

11/05/26