Interceptor

If you:

• like high-intensity plots that are incredibly well-researched
• have waited for ages to finally see a believable and well-written female action lead
• love great, witty dialogue and its flawless delivery
• are a fan of sublety and great taste in pacing
• have a faible for a sublime, but powerful score
• long for incredibly emotional and competent acting
• have an eye for masterful direction
• hope for Netflix to greenlight content based on quality for a change
• despise nepotism
• are hyped by gritty, well-choreographed and skillfully performed, captured and edited action

you should skip this and save yourself the embarrassment.

It's a fun to watch if you don't have a lot of expectations. Full of clichés and cinematic simplifications. At times you think the film is aimed for elementary school children.

This is one of those rare moments when you should trust the negative reviews. Elsa Pataky was fine in the small roles she had in the Fast and Furious films but she is not an action star and her acting can not support a film on its own. Apart from that the cgi in this is TERRIBLE, it looks like you are watching a direct to video film from the 80s. The writing is awful, the one liners in this are so generic and completely uninspired. The action in this is also very bland and the fight scenes are too repetitive. Nothing about this movie is fresh or entertaining, I'm not sure who the target audience is supposed to be but this is one movie that you should avoid.

A B-movie for sure -- the storyline is contrived, the dialog is superficial, and the acting is wooden. So my rating of 5/10 is probably generous. Nevertheless, I thought it was watchable and it fitted the purpose of having something to look at while I was exercising. Lead actress Elsa Patacky is front and center throughout this movie, playing US Army captain JJ Collins, who as soon as she is assigned to the remote marine base SBX-1 has to fight off terrorists who want to nuke 16 cities and destroy America. Somehow there's lots of money involved. Luke Bracey, as the smarmy leader of the enemies, has an easy way of delivering lines even if those lines are laughably conventional. And, Patacky's husband Chris Hemsworth (who's the executive producer -- what a coincidence) has a little cameo role that's completely meaningless but still pretty fun.

Almost right off the bat, Patacky gets down to action gear where we can enjoy looking at her very well muscled shoulders and arms (and that's kind of the main interest of the movie -- they really are nice to look at). There's lots of hand-to-hand combat and a fairly high body count, with the hero(ine) taking and dishing out lots of punishment and displaying superhuman stamina, but I'd be hard pressed to think of any original twist on anything that happened here. The idea that the US missile defence system depends on a single little remote ocean base that seems about as hard to knock over as a candy store is pretty implausible.

It feels like a B-grade version of Die Hard.

The opening blurb tells us America has two bases designated to stop inbound nuclear missiles from Russia. One is a military base in Alaska, no doubt guarded by plenty of heavily armed soldiers, plenty of security counter measures to stop people getting in and teams of backup in case of any problems. The other is a precarious floating rig, with a handful of missile batteries, that doesn't appear to have any defences or counter measures, and the nearest support is an hour away. From that set up, the bad guys we see in the film have really over complicated their plans. All they want to do is disable the interceptor rocket batteries, yet are stoic in following through their own plan, which is guarded by Captain J. J. Collins (Elsa Pataky), who is equally single minded in her objective, in the standard lone action hero way.

More bizarrely to all that, we have Chris Hemsworth providing comic interludes. Did the mildly simmering tension really need that?

Not really. The scenario is a claustrophobic set, resulting in intense and brutal fights, with basically the one goal that's in the title. Forget any notion of checking to see if the rest of the ships crew are alive (we told you we used nerve gas and shot them all, but maybe we didn't...), she has one mission and will carry it out. Tim Wong (who's also the films fight coordinator) as Zhang and Ingrid Kleinig (who's also the films second unit director) as Kira are most known for their stunt work, so it's no surprise that they are involved in some of the more physical acts. Steven A. Davis as Nikolai is also the films assistant fight coordinator, though he's not that active in fighting. Emotional support comes from Mayen Mehta as Corporal Rahul Shah playing the introverted subordinate soldier - a turtle owning family man - while Rhys Muldoon as Lieutenant Colonel Clark Marshall fills in the emotional back story about how the Captain has suffered in her career, with Belinda Jombwe as Ensign Washington giving a brief motivational speech . That seems to be the take away from the film; all the main characters feel/should feel wronged by the system, and it's how they deal with those feelings that separates which side their on.

The set is very minimal and the CGI reminiscent of 80's VHS stuff - it gets the story where it needs to go - while the soundtrack accents the vision; you can watch with subtitles and know something is going to happen by the "tense instrumental music".

IMDB also have Ali Kadhim as Dark Cloud (Japanese Sword Guy), yet he's not included in the films credits (and I don't remember him in the film). Maybe the producers thought that was one cliche too far?