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?
