Operation: Endgame

"You think it's easy to look like a bearded tampon?"

What a weird, odd, and ultimately underwhelming mixture Operation: Endgame ended up being. 

I was expecting a bloody action comedy with several really hot women and a couple of funny/interesting actors playing rival assassins who are out for blood, but instead I got a predictable, poorly scripted, ham-fisted critique on Bush-era intelligence operations. The great cast was really the only thing that made this movie somewhat worth my time. We've got Odette Yustman, Zach Galifiankis, Maggie Q, Rob Corddry, Adam Scott, Brandon T. Jackson, Emilie de Ravin, Ving Rhames, Jeffrey Tambor...it's like someone asked me personally about all the actors I'd like to see in a movie. Yet, they're utterly wasted on characters that are terribly written. It shouldn't be possible to make a mediocre movie with a cast this great, but whoever wrote the script certainly pulled it off.

The majority of the jokes are unfunny (Corddry does get a few gems, though), the fight choreography is unimpressive, and the movie as a whole would have been better without the looping real-life footage of President Obama's inauguration and the lame attempts to ground the story in some kind of political statement. I'm all for messages in movies, but Operation: Endgame goes about it without any subtlety or wit, and seemed a muddled mess as a result.  

I'm giving this a high score than it deserves because I got some enjoyment just from the opportunity to see a few of the actors I'm quite fond of (good Lord, Odette Yustman looks fantastic in a tank top), but I feel pretty comfortable advising others to just skip it, entirely. It's a shame that a movie with such potential ended up stumbling in the execution.

I watched this movie purely for Emilie De Ravin as Hierophant, but let me tell you, I was pleasantly amused! I'm not a big fan of violent comedies, but if you view this as more or less an assassin parody, it's a million times better. What really makes it is the security men up watching them all kill each other and reacting the same way I did, complete with shouts of "GET HIM!" and gagging. The cast is fun, the script expectantly awful in all the right ways, but this is NOT a movie to take seriously. Watch it when you have nothing better to do and have a good laugh. The twists and turns are fun and the score is pretty easy listening as well.

I am gonna explain what i wanna write with a metaphor.

If any of you has ever cooked from a cookbook before you will be sure to come across a recipe wherein you'll say to yourself 'that amount of salt can't be good' OR 'this much paprika...what do you wanna do? gimme an ulcer?!' OR 'that kinda butter is gonna give me a potbelly!'. So you adjust the ingredients, maybe even add a few of your own thinking you are gonna make the recipe your own, and then you find out the dish turned out bland and could have done without your own twists. It needed only those ingredients and in the quantity mentioned in the recipe to make it work.

I guess you get my point. When i came across the trailer it seemed to be a satirical action comedy with lots of gore to boot. And given the cast, it screamed awesome mindless fun.

But i guess the director decided that he needed to 'adjust the ingredients', maybe to make it his own style rather than a formulaic one. Well, sir, sometimes the formula is all that is needed. The action lacked the punch. There was blood and gore, yes, but the scene would cut to those 2 guys in 'corporate' making puking faces just when you though you are gonna see something really gross. The dialog, or rather the delivery, was sporadic at best - too rehearsed - almost like a B-movie. The action was badly choreographed and the camera angle shifted too many times for it to be smooth and coherent.

The premise of the movie couldn't be faulted though. Neither could the setting. Assassins having office-like cubicles and killing each other with office equipment is a cool idea. If only it could have been executed better.

I did not expect there to be a plot, and so the plot-twist at the end that tried to give some serious patriotic theme to the movie just felt 'bleh'. In fact, it did not make any sense at all.

Oh, if only the director had just stuck to the formula of max action, max gore and max comedy, then the premise and the actors themselves would have make this one a hit! Too bad!!

Every now and then there comes a movie that makes me want to write a review on; just to do the world a favor and help people save their money and time.

Do not bother with this one. It's got a good cast which tricked me into watching it. But when you take a good cast and hand it over to a developmentally retarded director, you get a movie called 'Operation endgame' The director clearly didn't know what he wanted. It was a wannabe comedy mixed with a wannabe action flick, that has no humor, little action and a wee bit of gore. It was a mess. It was so bad, that i don't even want to finish this review.

so i'll make it very simple; acting - bad, character development - there WAS none! cohesiveness - wasn't there, action - OK i suppose, comedy - bad, script - bad, plot - wtf?! overall - 2/10; only because i'm a nice guy:)

Last night i watched this movie with high expectations hoping for a lot of gun fights after seeing the poster, but there are none. Don't get me wrong it doesn't mean that this is a bad movie. It was actually pretty funny and had some good fight scenes.

I really liked it and enjoyed it. It was fun.

I really do recommend this movie to people.

If your expecting a gun crazy action movie - Don't bother at all.

If your expecting a comedy/action thats not to be taken seriously at all - Go for it!

7/10