★★½
“Run Gal Run”
Poor Gal Gadot. Her career since Wonder Woman has basically been one downhill slalom after another. From the disaster which was Wonder Woman 1984, through Heart of Stone, and now this. It feels like everything has been a critical and/or commercial disaster. Even when not the star, she has been catching strays, such as Red Notice and the misconceived (to put it mildly) live-action Snow White remake. It’s at the point where her presence in a project is almost more a warning. The reviews for this could be a new low. Worse than Heart of Stone? Surely not. I was braced though. And while I found this less actively annoying, it still certainly isn’t good.
It’s a script which would barely trouble the back of a beer-mat. On the day prosecutor Maia Marten (Gadot) is scheduled to appear in court for the trial of a crime boss, her son Noah (Wilmot) is kidnapped. Unless she does exactly what she’s told by a voice on the phone (Lewis), Noah will die. The end game is Maia shooting the key witness in the hotel where he is sequestered. But to get there, she must run across London, this being contrived required so that the kidnapper can monitor her. He has also hacked her phone, so she is unable to call for help. There’s also some stuff about Maia’s mother having murdered her father. It doesn’t serve much purpose, and can safely be ignored.
This is the perfect movie, if you’re interested in spending eighty minutes, watching Gadot in motion, slowly getting sweatier and more dishevelled. To be honest… There are probably worse things to look at. Heart of Stone and Wonder Woman 1984, to name but two. As someone who lived in London for more than a decade, I also enjoyed trying to work out exactly where they were. This was challenging, given I left twenty-five years ago, and quite a lot has changed since. Still, I got the lie of the land, and unlike some films (Sherlock Holmes having its hero run from Tower Bridge to the Houses of Parliament in two minutes, requiring a sprint speed of 60+ mph), the geography here seems generally to make sense.
But the fact that I was more interested in tourist landmarks, than the plot or the characters, is significant. You may even spend more of the film thinking of easier, less complex ways, for the voice on the phone to achieve the same end goal. For this is very much an example of an Amazon Prime streaming movie. You don’t need to think about the plot, or even pay attention to it. Everything is clear inside ten minutes, and the last five tidies everything up nicely, with a twist you will likely see coming – at least, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. In the middle? Running, taunting of Maia by the voice on the phone, and problem-solution on repeat. As Saturday night entertainment, it was… okay, I guess? Never going to watch it again though.
Dir: Kevin Macdonald
Star: Gal Gadot, Damian Lewis, Alfred Enoch, Rory Wilmot