Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx team up for some credibility ruining violent nonsense.
While we try to give balanced reviews here at STS, fuck me this is nasty. While a bit of the old ultra-violence is to be expected in a revenge thriller, it needs to be handled carefully if you want to avoid your anti-hero becoming the villain. Here, Butler’s general blandness makes him difficult to root for, meaning he’s on thin ice from the get go, and his subsequent actions end up confusing who exactly your supposed to back.
Over the years Sir Maurice Micklewhite has been is some right old guff. For every moment of quiet gravitas as Alfred The Butler there’s a ‘Shadow Run’ waiting to quietly derail things.
Even back in the good old days you couldn’t trust him not to slip into a dress and beggar belief fighting killer Bees – frankly, the man’s long been a danger to his own career, so it’s a tribute to his charisma that he remains such an enduring screen icon – and in Daniel Barber’s Sarth Lahndahn violence-fest, we’re reminded exactly why.
