Summer Sale!! During the month of July, all my books and stories will be on sale at Smashwords. Three, including the first two stories in my urban fantasy series, The Yo-Yo Files, are free. My short fantasy collection is half off, as is my latest sci-fi novel, Two’s Company. My first novel, Circle Unbroken, is at even more of a discount. Ebooks are available in many formats. The sale begins July 1 and ends July 31. I hope you find something that interests you, and please tell your friends.
My rating: 3 stars
This was a movie the BaldMan chose from Netflix. I looked at the description and noted it was a pretty short movie. I have to admit I initially thought this was going to be another action movie full of car chases and explosions and not much in the way of plot or development. In some ways I was right. It is pretty action-packed and there is a lot of the thrill ride stuff you find in these movies. But I did enjoy this one a bit more than some others of its type.
The story is told from the point of view of James Silva (Mark Wahlberg), a high level operative for a secret special operative group called Overwatch. He is being debriefed after the 22 mile mission and recounts how the team got involved and what happened as they tried to do the job assigned to them. Sixteen months before this mission, they executed a raid on a Russian outpost in the US in an attempt to find shipments of caesium before it can be weaponized. During the raid, information about the caesium is destroyed. Later, in southeast Asia, a police officer named Noor surrenders to the US embassy, with a hard drive that he claims has the locations of the caesium deposits on it. The drive is programmed to destroy itself in 8 hours, and Noor will only give up the disabling code when he is sure of safe passage to the US. Silva and his team are tasked with delivering Noor to a spot where he will be picked up by a plane to take him to the US. The plane’s landing place is 22 miles from the city where Noor surrenders. The team works to get Noor to safety, pursued all the way by assassins determined to stop Noor from escaping.
Why did I like this one more than others of the same vein?
Mark Wahlberg. He played the somewhat neurotic, hyperactive Silva so well. Silva’s mind works at lightning speed, and apparently has since he was a child. Wahlberg delivers his lines in a rapid-fire, almost staccato way that mimics the mental process of the character very well. Iko Uwais was good as Noor, also, and gets to show off his fight choreography and skills multiple times. There is also a nice little twist at the end that I thought worked well and left things open for a sequel.
The film got pretty poor critical reviews, but then so do a lot of movies I liked. It’s not deep nor is the plot over-involved. It’s short, so there really isn’t time to deep dive into anything, and a few things are left hanging or maybe not explained in detail. But for what it is, it isn’t horrible. I’ve certainly seen worse. This one will probably appeal to, well, Mark Wahlberg fans, of course. But also to fans of thriller adventure movies with lots of action scenes, some decent fight sequences, and overall pretty decent acting.
And So On... 