Seção 8 - Organização Secreta

There is the basis of a decent film here, yes it has all been done before but the opening half hour or so is all pretty engaging (although you do feel they just let Mickey Rourke do and say whatever he wanted).

Then it started to get a bit silly, and then very, very silly. To the point it is barely making sense and they are having to have characters have one sided conversations on telephones to gloss over plot confusion - It just lost all credibility for the sake of slightly better writing.

That said it is clearly made on a budget and it goes well to hide some of this, clearly the whole film is shot in L. A. but watching it does a good job of making out that its characters travel around the US and beyond. The action scenes are fine too, sometimes a bit confused to follow but this actually gives it a bit more authenticity, I felt.

The cast are pretty good overall though two or three are so one dimensional, due to the writing, that they don't come off so well. Its a shame the last half hour or so wasn't as well made as the first and that it feels it needs to have plot twist after plot twist.

Ultimately its better and has a lot more to offer than you might expect, even if it is a bit disappointing overall.

I'm giving this a 4 to be generous to the cast and production crew. Excellent job as usual.

In fact everything about this story is the usual: a military acquaintance; a plot that becomes more senseless each scene; long, long flashbacks to show the hero's emotions; hand-to-hand attacks during gunfights;and plot inconsistencies that give the impression that a producer's 15-year-old son wrote a script and Dad decided to encourage him... and had the bucks.

Verdict: AVOID. Despite the cast and production quality, I found this movie completely forgettable and an unfortunate waste of time, even though I fast-forwarded through all the my-dead-wife-and-kid-poor-me scenes.

I didn't have a bunch of expectations going in, but I like Lundgren and Rourke enough to give this movie a shot. I admit to not seeing some of the plot twists coming, and that was great. I also agree with the other reviewers about the silliness of some of the movie, the endless lack of ammo, and bad shooting. However, it is for entertainment, and I was entertained. I like that Lundgren had a part to play in the behind the scenes in this movie, and overall it was engaging enough for me to keep watching it. I wouldn't watch this movie twice, but I enjoyed it watching it once. Just don't look for academy award winning anything, but the veteran actors do a fine job fleshing this movie out.

The directing was amateur hour with the abysmal slow-mo and faded flashbacks - and terrible cast direction. Most of the second-rate characters felt like it was their first acting gig, and I know they're better than that, so this is the perfect example of the director failing to direct his cast properly. Although Ryan Kwanten acted his heart out, he was poorly showcased from the directing to the writing, that was riddled with cheesy dialogue. The screenplay, even with the few entertaining twists and action scenes, was too generic and cliched, and lacked suspense, intrigue and thrills. I wanted to see more of Mickey Rourke, and I'm not even sure if Scott Adkins' character was needed, but he surely needed to be in this film much more to enhance the action. I feel he should've been cast for Kwanten's character, the entire backstory and current one would've been more believable and suspenseful had there been more fight scenes. There were far too many plot and technical issues, most fifth-grade drama class errors. Eg: the briefcase with maybe 5-6 rough stacks having 3 million in it was a joke. Never mind Lundgren's full-auto handgun with the endless ammo. If you're a fan of the iconic actors, it's an ok one-time watch if you're bored, just don't expect to see that much of most of them, or any decent non-generic story.

SECTION 8 is one of those B-movie action thrillers that assembles various big genre names for clout, but fails to actually do very much with any of the cast. It's a generically plotted thing about a guy who loses his wife and kid in a home invasion (this involves a nice cameo from regular screen heavy Robert LaSardo, once a henchman in 1990s Seagal movies). From there we move into less interesting territory with a shadowy assassination organisation spearheaded by Dermot Mulroney. Ryan Kwanten has been good in other stuff but fails to impress in this one; others like Mickey Rourke and Dolph Lundgren make minor impacts. The action is routine too, aside from a nice casino shoot-out with Scott Adkins.