Survivor
Director: James Mcteigue
Actors: Dylan McDermott, Parker Sawyers, Bashar Rahal, Paddy Wallace
Release Date: Friday 5th June 2015
Genre(s): Action
Running time: 96 minutes
Former Wachowski sibling protégé James McTeigue directs this London set thriller with more than a bang of Bourne about it. While it's good to see Pierce Brosnan playing a bad guy for a change, that's about as high as interest peaks here. This is a drab, muddled affair that plays more like a subpar episode of the recently relaunched 24.
Milla Jovovich in an American working at the Foreign Service Office in London. She was "the best" at what she did in Washington, but due to initially non-descript reasons ends up working in the UK where she uses her finely honed terrorist spotting skills to good measure. But realising fairly sharpish that there's a conspiracy afoot, she is soon on the run and struggling to find anyone to trust.
There seemed to be solid budget behind Survivor, and Jovovich has a strong following globally; so the fact that this one didn't press screen could only point to the obvious - it's not great at all. Where there should be pace and urgency, there's cheesiness and blank stares. For the set pieces, you'd expect more from the man who handled a lot of the action in The Matrix and showed promise with V for Vendetta. We can only hope the Netflix series he also helms on, Sense8 marks a return to form,
Echoes of Bourne and even Salt are obvious throughout, but said comparisons - even with the latter - only further illustrate the lack of cinematic calibre here. You've seen this type of film before done far better.
An average episode of an average TV show at best, and certainly not worth the price of a cinema admission.
