Ah, what do you know. Another hitman movie
with a young girl to protect against an avalanche of killers. Count me in.
This is basically a Mission Impossible film but played at even a faster speed
if that is possible. Based on a series of books written by Mark Greaney,
it has sequel in its DNA and apparently that is in the works. There is nothing
mildly original going on here - I mean you can't expect that for a budget
of $200 million - but what it has, shows where a lot of that budget was spent.
Blowing shit up. And a kill count larger than a dinner party. At the
Super Bowl. It is the kind of film that you don't even want to think about
afterwards because it is as empty as the lunch buffet at 4pm. It is all motion
and action and you just want to inhale it and let go. Dumb as rocks but nothing
wrong with that.
A distance from his roles in La La Land and Barbie, Ryan Gosling plays the
best hitman in the world. He could kill a platoon of soldiers with a plastic
spoon. He works for an organization called Sierra that was formed by the
CIA to do the really dirty jobs that they don't want to be tied to if it
goes wrong. And if it is too dirty for the CIA, you know it is stinking dirty.
Sierra hires from only the best places - prisons with sociopaths with long
sentences ahead of them. Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) makes his sales pitch
to a man soon to be renamed Six - you can stay here for another 40 years
or you can kill for us. Where do I sign? You don't sign. You don't exist.
It is now 18-years later and Six has a kill to make in Bangkok during a big
celebration. His handler is a CIA agent - Dani (Ana de Armas) - who
has set it up but Six can't make the kill as planned and has to do it by
hand - killing all his bodyguards with silverware and then the target. Before
he dies, the target tells him he is Four and hands him a thumb drive. He
may as well have handed him a chunk of plutonium because this jet starts
the CIA and a professional psycho killer (Chris Evans - after Captain American
this must have been fun) coming after Six to retrieve the information and
kill him. And they kidnap a little girl, the niece of Fitzroy.
Turns out he has a soft spot for her. Two big set pieces finish off the film.
Six is tracked down to Vienna and most of the city is destroyed in the ensuing
fight and then he tracks them down to a huge castle estate in Croatia to
rescue the girl. You don't kidnap little girls, especially ones with a pacemaker.
And somewhere along the line Dani decides to help him - maybe she saw La
La Land - and turns out to be quite the killer herself. She almost steals
the movie from him. If action is your jackson, you should enjoy this to some
degree. Leave your head at the door. Danush a Tamil star plays a very
good hitman after Six and may be in the sequel hopefully and Alfre Woodard
is a retired spy. It is directed by the Russo Brothers who have done a bunch
of those bigger than God budget Marvel films. For this, they should
have left some of that CGI at home. Super heroes sure, but a professional
killer film doesn't need them.
