The Paradox Effect

The scummy story is porous, obscured and weak. The best scenes are those with Olga Kurylenko, who saves this movie with a few exceptional performances and her beauty. She is however, the only stand out. The ham fisted direction alienates the viewer. Harvey Keitel performance was also not satisfying. I particularly disliked his extreme close ups. Without Olga, this would barely rate worth watching. She elevates an otherwise very poor overall experience to something worth your time. Another major irritation is the too frequent Italian voice overs with no subtitles, which irritated me greatly. I really can't recommend this movie, except to those who adore Olga.

I was excited to see Olga Kurylenko in the cast. But the real Olga Kurylenko would have ended Kovec, and this tiresome excuse for an action film right along with him, in the first 10 minutes. Kovec was in such pain he couldn't see straight, his Beretta was lying on the table in easy reach, there was absolutely no chemistry between them, so there was nothing to prevent the real Olga from picking up the piece and putting an end to all our agony.

So, please call me, Olga, and I will personally write you a decent action movie script. One where no one dares utter the cliché, "no! YOU drop it." Because everyone knows the real Olga Kurylenko would take the shot in a heartbeat, and waste the cowardly bad guy hiding behind his quivering hostage with deadly accuracy.

This movie is, clearly, a grade B movie, and that's fine. We all know that directors/writers have to walk before they can run. Every great writer had to start somwhere, and a person's first attempt at writing or directing a movie, isn't likely to win any awards. However, it's downright shameful to pay for good reviews, and I can't help but think that that's what's going on here. Either the creaters, of this movie, are paying for good reviews, or the good reviews are from friends, family members, etc. Don't believe me? Just try watching the movie, and you'll understand what I mean.

This is a bad movie. I tolerated about twenty minutes before choosing to turn it off. Like I've said, it's grade B, and I wasn't in the mood to watch a grade B movie. So, I turned it off.

By far, the biggest problem, with this movie, is the writing. It's extremely amateur. It's not hard to tell, based on the dialog, as well as how unrealistic everything is; pertaining to the events that take place. It seems as if it were written by someone who's in high school. Perhaps the writer wrote it, while in high school, and then, years later, got enough money to actualy produce it. However, the source material was never critiqued and re-written, and the project was never reassessed. Otherwise, a choice probably wouldn't have been made to move forward with production.

I'm writing this review in order to provide honesty. It's what reviews are supposed to be about. I'm giving my honest review, so that moviegoers can know the truth about this film, and can assess whether or not they want to invest any time watching it.

If you're looking for a grade B movie, then this may be what you're looking for. However, if you're looking for polished entertainment --the kind of stuff that we're used to, then I don't recommend wasting your time with this movie. You'll, likely, be disappointed.

I'm used to her kicking ass and being a strong character in this film. She was trying to act strong but she was just awful. The script is awful. The actors were awful. Harvey Keitel was terrible and the premises foolish because she's like this reform junkie and all of a sudden by the end of the show, she's like shooting weapons and, jumping over cars like someone said knocking out the bad guys I mean just ridiculous The last few movies she has been awful and however cartel is like his day has come and gone. A little girl in this movie cannot act her way out of a paper bag.

And the black kid with the African accent is like trying to be tough guy drug dealer not buying it . And the cop Interpol undercover cop is really bad. I mean he shouldn't give up his day job.

Ok, I didn't fall asleep, but this was painful to watch. Another reviewer said it felt long despite being 88 minutes and I have to say, I was convinced this was 2 hours or more.

I'm American and tend to only like American films, but I saw The Courier a year or two ago and Olga was great and the film was far better than it should have been. Gary Oldman brought his game and I thought Harvey would do the same here.

The plot was weak and I found it hard to care about any of it or the people involved and of course, everybody was stupid and made the wrong choice leading to the overall mess that this movie was.

No idea what the budget was, but this movie was so bad, Matt Damon couldn't have saved it.