Publisher: CinemaSerf September 3, 2022
Well at least there is some eye candy - George Clooney is at his most alluring. Otherwise, this is really all rather a dull and unremarkable thrill-free thriller that follows the antics of an American colonel "Devoe" and his handler "Kelly" (Nicole Kidman). He is a special intelligence officer, she a scientific expert at the White House - and both are concerned following a nuclear accident on board a train in Russia. Was it an accident? What happened to the warheads that were being transported? Is this a state sponsored bit of warmongering, or have the Kremlin got some rogues to deal with? Of course it falls to our not very dynamic duo to thwart the dastardly plan before the United Nations itself becomes a target. It's got all the usual ingredients - political machinations in Washington, Vienna comes in for quite a pummelling and, of course, there are pyrotechnics too - but the whole film is just too derivative. It smacks of a weak "James Bond" style affair, only without the gadgets or the power ballad. The supporting cast are adequate, and from the looks of it pretty local to the Macedonian location filming, but that authenticity does nothing to augment the pretty stilted dialogue and at over two hours, the largely lethargic pace of the whole thing. Clooney looks the part, Kidman looks uncertain and frankly, a little bored. I now how she felt.