Interceptor

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?

This Australian production harks back to the B-movie days with all the necessary elements - silly improbable story, bad acting, poor American accents and some questionable special effects.

But you know what? This was fun to watch, more so than some big budget action movies. It knows what it is and doesn't try to hide it in any way. The fact that Chris Hemsworth hams it up alongside his wife is testament to that.

The fight scenes are fairly decent and there's some decent depictions of violence as well.

If you go in knowing what you're in for, you may just find yourself enjoying this!

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.

I can understand why some people don't like the movie, as it was a cheesy and generic flick for sure, but not sure if I can understand the many upset 1/10 reviews from people who seem to have taken this personally somehow. All those reviews read exactly like metacritic review bombs where people are upset over something else than the content they're reviewing... or just rants from people who love exaggerating for drama.

This reminded me of some straight to VHS average action flicks that you'd pick up from the rental place completely deliberately for that day where you just want a mindless movie and as such, it worked very well. Did I laugh and roll my eyes at convenient plotpoint? Sure. But I also expected to.

I kinda liked seeing a female lead for once. Just like male leads powers are always played way up and how John McLane can still run and kick ass after being battered and bruised beyond any reason, just flying away from explosions instead of exploDING, so did she. If your suspension of disbelief fails only on the part of her being a woman, I guess you truely have it ingrained in you that "women = weak" and can't even for a moment tune that out in a silly action flick.

This kinda reminded me of some "Tomb Raider" kind of deal, with the exception that I actually enjoyed this more than any Tomb Raider movie.

If you are "tired of feeling like my identity is always attacked by films such as this.", that is just sad. There have been crazy egomaniac villains that have agendas like this in movies for a small eternity and obviously the movie's not saying he's right.

If you are very keen on only seeing agendas in women being shown as anything capable, do yourself a favor and skip it. If you're looking for a generic action flick for a mindless day? Sure, why not :)

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.