This urgent race for answers gives the film momentum, and it’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana and Chris Evans who give the thrills personality. Patric, as Max, is a beautifully efficient corporatized villain. He is somehow connected to the CIA, but he strikes me more as a banker, manipulating toxic assets with a fiendish grin. He’s always in a suit, always thinking of world domination as a business strategy, wielding a gun not as a weapon but as a means of eliminating complications. When an assistant, carrying an umbrella to shield Max from the sun on the beach, accidentally stumbles when a gust of wind comes in off the ocean, Max kills her on the spot. It’s not that he’s evil; he’s just punishing unprofessionalism.
The syrupy-voiced Morgan, who I thoroughly enjoyed as the maniacal Comedian in Watchmen, brings the same sort of twitchy edge to Clay. Here’s a guy who’s unfailingly confident in his command of his renegades, but secretly haunted by the fact that he’s been double-crossed by Max and forced to go rogue. Chris “Captain America” Evans, as Jensen, is the comic relief who actually succeeds in generating a couple chuckles. I know there may be some who think he’s mugging a little too much for the camera, but when he suits up as a bicycle messenger to go hack into Max’s computer system, I thought it was a funny spoof of the realm of Mission: Impossible. Jensen looks so out of place, he barges in so obviously, that he must know he’s going to get busted. In fact, I think he’s counting on it, just so he can relish the moment when he must call on the snipers. As far as he’s concerned: A little less conversation, a little more action.
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And then there’s Zoe Saldana. Zoe, Zoe, Zoe – the woman I will henceforth refer to as Hot Z, who steals the show just as she has in Star Trek and Avatar, coming in a close second as the fiercest female assassin of 2010 (right behind Hit-Girl). She karate kicks her way into the movie, pummeling Clay with feet and fists, before pummeling him in a far different manner. She veers from firecracker to ally to girlfriend to femme fatale – and we follow her every step of the way.
The whole thing feels like The A-Team, if the A-listers were a little bit more personable, and their missions involved not only a cool van but also a helicopter descending into Miami, to latch on to an armored truck with a giant magnet, or a sprawling shootout at the port of Los Angeles. This isn’t tragedy or timely drama. It’s not the most memorable comic-to-film conversion, nor the most inventive.
It’s a serviceable plot, with brilliantly-staged and uber-creative battle sequences, and above-average personality. At a time when so many franchises seem so eager to sneer, brood, or play serious, I’m okay with this balancing act. This is mindless fun. But emphasis on the latter.
GRADE: B
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