Survivor

Dir: James McTeigue

2015

*

Survivor must be one of the most cliché-ridden espionage thrillers of all time, but it has a few likable elements. The opening scene is quite chilling and pulls you into the story immediately, but before long, it becomes clear that said scene has very little to do with the overall story, which pollutes the movie somewhat. We start by witnessing two American Soldiers being captured somewhere in Afghanistan, one deemed important by their captors, the other dismissed as useless and subsequently set alight. Dark and serious stuff. We learn, sometime later (although it’s very predictable), that the solder’s father works in the American Embassy in London and is being bribed by his son’s captors. Kate Abbott (played by Milla Jovovich) is a diplomatic security service agent recently transferred to the embassy, who picks out the solders dad (played by Robert Forster) straightaway. Or at least, it is implied that she is, because she never really comes to the conclusion until about 30 minutes after the audience has worked it out. The rest of the film follows a similar pattern. When the bad guys realise Abbott is onto them they hire one of the world’s leading assassins (who behaves like the world’s most incapable assassin for the entire film) to bump her off in a ridiculously over the top manner. Loads of people die, except for Abbott. The assassin (played by Pierce Brosnan), is known as the Watchmaker because he presumably once made a bomb in a watch, makes bombs using a magnifying glass and clockwork bits and bobs. Most of the time he just runs around shooting at people and missing. The film is essentially a bunch of Americans being chased by and Irishman through the least convincing version of London I have ever seen. Angela Bassett plays the Embassy’s Ambassador and Dylan McDermott plays a fellow Embassy secret person and you wonder whether they had even watched themselves in Olympus Has Fallen? Abbott is helped along the way by the Embassy’s top computer expert, played by Frances de la Tour, who communicates with her via her super computer desk that shows her absolutely everything that is happening in the world at that very moment. We know Abbott is trustworthy because “She lost many friends in 9/11’, we known the Watchmaker is a villain because he wears a long dark coat and we know the Embassy’s top computer expert is indeed a computer expert, because she is in a wheelchair. We aren’t told anything about the important aspect of the story and we don’t see the human side of the story. Surely this should have been about the solders father and his struggle to do what is right versus saving his son? Sadly, it is just a lot of running around and doing the sort of thing you could never do in London, or indeed any other city in the world (finding a parking space outside Euston Station? Ridiculous!). Much of the film was made in Bulgaria. They clearly asked the props guys to make it look like London and all they did was fill a Bulgarian road with Mini-Coopers. It has few redeeming features. However, I quite liked the ending. The film went from low-budget thriller to a 1970s low-budget thriller, which was a huge improvement. The final plot, to blow up the Times Square New Years Eve Ball, was something out of an old disaster movie, like Rollercoaster or Black Sunday. It doesn’t quite make up for it though, the film is still lazy and boring. There is nothing clever about the script, there is no novelty in seeing Pierce Brosnan pretend to be an evil James Bond and Euston Underground Station isn’t underneath Euston St Pancras Station, you’ll find it’s actually Kings Cross. I really don’t know how or why people keep asking James McTeigue to keep directing their films.