Tag: spy

We Already Have a Woman We Like: My Life in the CIA, by Lucy Kirk

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ½

I suspect the issue here is partly my own expectations. When I read a memoir of somebody who spent more than three decades working for the Central Intelligence Agency, I was half-expecting a life somewhere between Salt and Atomic Blonde (ok, the latter was technically MI-5, but the concept remains valid). This is… not that. It is, of course, perfectly understandable that real life would not be as exciting as a Hollywood film. But given how long the author worked there, I would have expected more entertaining, amusing or even interesting anecdotes. The peak is probably right at the end, with her struggles to pass a lie-detector test when she tried to go back into the Company after 9/11.

It is an an eye-opener, in a couple of ways. Firstly, I kinda thought the CIA simply were not allowed to operate on American soil – that was the territory of the FBI. But based on this book, it appears that’s not the case, with Kirk being based domestically for a number of positions. These mostly involve gathering intelligence from friendly American assets who had foreign connections, and seem to involve being up-front about this being on behalf of the CIA. However, it’s hard to be sure, because a lot of specifics are omitted. This isn’t the author’s fault: an introductory note says, “As a retired CIA employee, I am obligated to present any writing I do to the Prepublication Classification Review Board… Places I served and lengths of time are notably absent per PCRB guidelines.”

This means you’re left with no real sense of place and time, whether she’s serving at home or abroad, and the specific details of what she was working on, are also very limited. In lieu of that you get a lot of complaints about chauvinism and flat-out sexism in the profession. What can I say? It was the sixties. I’m not sure what she thought life would be like, but a degree from Wellesley College might perhaps create certain, unrealistic expectations of life in the outside world. Some of her criticisms do appear justified: there’s no real reason why women couldn’t operate as case officers, just as well as men. But there’s a certain point beyond which I found myself rolling my eyes and quietly mouthing, “We get it”. I mean, she stayed there for thirty years. How bad could it be?

The other thing I took away is how banal and humdrum most intelligence work is – in sharp contrast to every depiction of it in fictional books, movies and television shows. It feels as if Kirk spent more time fighting with bureaucracy than Communism. In this way, it’s no different from any other big business, with the bosses at the top severely disconnected from those on the front lines. I certainly will admit to having learned things here. Those things, however, are just not particularly interesting. I’ll be sticking with the fiction, thank you very much.

Author: Lucy Kirk
Publisher: BookBaby, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Stand-alone memoir

Code Name: Tiranga

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★★★
“Moderately spicy.”

This Indian movie flopped at the local box-office, and comes limping onto Netflix with an IMDb rating of just 3.2. Reviews there are largely scathing, calling it “unrealistic.” Oh, sure: but people bursting into song for elaborate musical numbers – that totally happens in Mumbai. To be clear, I love the likes of RRR. But realism, or anything in that solar system, is pretty low down on the list of reasons I watch Bollywood films. This is… well, serviceable, is what I’d call it. It is too long for the material, at 137 minutes, but again – length goes with the territory, it’s more a question whether the film is capable of filling it adequately. Here, not so much, at least in the second half.

The heroine is Durga Devi Singh (Chopra), an Indian spy whom we first meet honey-trapping Dr. Mirza Ali (Sandhu) in Afghanistan, in order to set a trap for terrorist leader, Khalid Omar (Kelkar). The trap fails, but Durga feels bad at having betrayed Mirza, for whom she has genuine feelings. A subsequent mission sees her sent to kill a captured operative, to prevent him from spilling secrets to the Pakistani intelligence agency. She ends up rescuing him instead, but is hurt in the process, which brings her back into the company of the good doctor. During the rescue attempt, Omar’s wife is also killed, a death for which the terrorist blames Durga, and is now prepared to go to any lengths for revenge on her.

As spy stuff goes, it’s all fairly generic, with other threads such as the presence of a mole inside the Indian spy service. There is not much novel or exciting here, but it is carried out with an adequate degree of skill, and really only one particularly gratuitous song, when Mirza goes all karaoke at a wedding for what seems like half an hour. The camerawork is nicely scope, with a lot of exotic locations, and while Chopra won’t be winning any awards for her action, she functions decently. It’s just pleasing to see a genuine Bollywood action heroine in this genre: things like the YRF Spy Universe are typically so macho, they’re in danger of choking on their own mustaches.

The first half definitely works better, with the plot consistently moving forward. The movie feels, from an action point, that it peaks too early, and then lumbers its way through the final hour, before the inevitable face-off between Durga and Khalid, which goes about as you would expect. Things then continue to run on, as the mole’s identity is revealed, and the story rehashed in flashback to that end. I may have been hunting for snacks in the cupboard by this point. There’s a truly weird sequence where the film inexplicably goes into first-person shooter mode for an extended period, which had me trying to figure out if it was entirely CGI. They likely should not have bothered, yet it’s a rare blatant misstep, in a film which seems to pride itself on aggressively mediocre competence.

Dir: Ribhu Dasgupta
Star: Parineeti Chopra, Harrdy Sandhu, Sharad Kelkar, Rajit Kapur

Inheritance

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★★★
“The family that spies together, lies together.”

Or, um, something, I guess. Maya (Dynevor) is at her mother’s funeral, when she gets a surprise, in the appearance of her long estranged father, Sam (Ifans). He wants to reconnect with her, and to this end, offers her a job with his real-estate company in Cairo. Despite qualms, Maya accepts, but not long after her arrival, Sam is kidnapped. To obtain his release, the kidnappers order her to recover a package and deliver it to them. Things turn out to be more complex than that, naturally, and the resulting trail takes Maya first to India, then on to South Korea, with various parties keenly interested in the outcome. She discovers the murky truth about her father’s business activities too.

While that likely won’t surprise anyone who has seen this kind of film, it does a good job of capturing the escalating sense of paranoia felt by the heroine. What is going on? Is her father a good guy or not? Who can she trust? [For the last, it’s unsurprising, and not really a spoiler, if you go with “nobody at all” there] The whole film was shot on an iPhone which is kinda impressive, because it looks surprisingly decent. It does add a hand-held immediacy to proceedings, and this helps in some sequences, such as when she is being pursued through the streets of Mumbai. Or is it Delhi? I’ll admit, it hard to keep track sometimes.

On the other hand, I tend to feel this should only be one trick in the cinematic locker, and because it’s used for the entirety here, its impact does tend to diminish. Fortunately, it’s considerably more stable than I expected, so I presume this wasn’t just the director waving it around by hand. Dynevor has to carry the film with her performance, and I did like the character arc. Maya starts off as a fairly nondescript party girl, who basically flings herself into hedonistic excess after the death of her mother, for whom she had been sole carer of late. But by the end, she has become hard-bitten and cynical, deception now coming as easily as breathing to her.

In its hand-held energy and globe-trotting shenanigans, it feels like it might inhabit a small, extremely cheap corner of the Bourne universe. However, I would definitely not expect any significant action set-pieces commensurate with that. While Maya does qualify here – she’s absolutely left to sink or swim based on her own abilities to escape perilous situations – it’s her instinctual smarts which are key to survival. You may be able to see where this will end up. In particular, there was one line which was absolutely an “Ah-hah!” moment for me in this regard. I wouldn’t say that destroys the film, since this is one where the journey is more interesting than the destination. This iPhone technique isn’t somewhere I’d like to live, yet it was an interesting place to visit. 

Dir: Neil Burger
Star: Phoebe Dynevor, Rhys Ifans, Necar Zadegan, Kersti Bryan

Guilty Beauty

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★★★
“Thoroughly lost in translation.”

Well, this is a real roller-coaster ride of style and incompetence. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Chinese film where the subtitles were quite so incomprehensible. Even though this one is on the YouTube channel for an official Chinese streaming service (iQiYi), the soundtrack was entirely muted at some points, and the soundtrack replaced by jaunty elevator musak at others. Despite being a mere sixty-six minutes, the presentation is therefore something of a test of endurance, and I am also not prepared to guarantee the accuracy of the plot synopsis, character names or actors. There was heavy use of Google Translate required, there being no IMDb page for the movie. I did my best.

Though this is not immediately clear, it takes place in… 1930’s Shanghai, at a guess? Not sure if the Japanese are actually occupying the city, or if it’s just a Casablanca-style nest of spies and intrigue. Working for a quasi-governmental part of the Chinese authorities (yeah, it’s vague) are our trio of heroines: Qiu Di (Zhang Y.), gothette Lü Yun (Wang) and schoolgirl Cui Ya (Zhang T). They have to recover a roll of film stolen by the Japanese military, now in the possession of gangster Huang Sen. In order to get close to him, our trio opt to go through his godson, Kwok Tin-ming (Ke). Di’s mad musical skills make her best suited, so she makes contact with Kwok and becomes his girlfriend, while her two colleagues…

Um, well, I’m not sure exactly what the plan was here, because Di doesn’t do very much: her associates complete their mission without any real trouble, and we’re only twenty minutes in. Thereafter… more stuff happens. I remain vague, not out of a fear of spoilers, more because but I would not be prepared to wager money on many of the specifics. It seems like a former ally of the trio is now working for the Japanese? Maybe? I initially thought they already got the film back, but apparently not, because Di keeps hanging out with her target. He finally realizes he is being played, and Di looks surprisingly broken-up about it. Genuine feelings, maybe?

I was certainly hoping for more action, given the poster and brisk opening, something along the lines of a Chinese version of the original Charlie’s Angels movie. There’s an opening fight, a spot of action during the film recovery heist and then a long lull before a moderately rousing finale. Everyone suddenly remembers about the film again, Di has to fight a slew of kabuki-masked ninja types, and then try to rescue her boyfriend, before a final scene which… I have no clue about. I will say, the movie does look good overall, with super-crisp photography and a sense of style across its characters and settings. If you told me this was an adaptation of a local comic-book, I would believe you – it possesses that sort of aesthetic. The film is below: perhaps you can make more sense of it than I!

Dir: Sun Jiayi
Star: Zhang Yinan, Ke Jiahao, Wang Xiran, Zhang Tong

Ballerina Assassin

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★★
“Let the buyer beware.”

Right in the middle of us watching this, Chris got a text from our daughter: “I think we rented the wrong version of Ballerina…” Yes, independently, she was watching the same film. The difference is, we understood what we were getting into. We knew this was a mockbuster from infamous purveyor of such things, The Asylum. I thought the concept of people mistaking Asylum movies for the real thing was an urban legend. Courtesy of our daughter, we now know better. Or worse. For this is, of course, not fit to lace up Ballerina‘s shoes, and anyone expecting it will be sorely disappointed. Yet it’s not irredeemable. I’ve seen considerably worse. From The Asylum,  in particular. 

Though I will question the title. Heroine Maria Herrera (Kaur) is not particularly an assassin. She’s really an agent, working for a shadowy government agency run by Bixby (Keating). She is, however, a former ballerina. This comes in handy for her new mission, in which the agency seeks to trap cartel head and aspiring politician Javier Aguilar (Sellar) on his trip to the United States. Maria is tasked with getting close to his wife, Carmen (Scotto), who is going to an audition for a spot in a ballet troupe. Naturally, it’s not that simple. Maria soon discovers there is someone in the agency who is actually collaborating with Javier, and has a strong desire to see her taken out of the picture. Permanently. 

As stories go, it’s fairly workmanlike. You won’t find it hard to work out who’s the mole. To be fair, the film doesn’t stretch this element out too long, which would have been irritating. It then becomes a battle for possession of a hard-drive containing incriminating evidence. Loyalties shift – Javier in particular is surprisingly sympathetic for a cartel boss – all the way till the final scene. Kaur, who also starred in The Asylum’s Furiosa mockbuster, Road Wars: Max Fury (review of that coming next week) is okay. She’s not particularly pretty, but that kinda works for the character. I was amused by her using her ballet skills to get through a laser corridor, like the kind first seen in Resident Evil.

There’s also a combat drone brought up early on, and you just know it’s going to end up chasing down the heroine. However, when it eventually does, the results are underwhelming, and this goes for the majority of the action. It’s basic stuff, with very little imagination or flair, and nobody here is able to carry it off at any level above the barest minimum. As cheap entertainment – we literally got it through our local library for free – it just about passes muster, if you’re in an undemanding mood. But it’d be much better off not inviting comparisons to what’s likely to be the best action heroine film of the year. Our daughter was highly unhappy about the deceptive marketing, and I cannot blame her in the slightest.

Dir: Michael Su
Star: Preet Kaur, Dominic Keating, Nicolas Sellar, Rocio Scotto

Agent of Death

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★★½
“Multiple personality new world order”

I quite liked the idea here, but the execution just wasn’t quite good enough to do justice to the concept. It feels like a matter of resources to some degree. But I also feel that a few tweaks to things would have paid significant dividends. The heroine is Tara Croydon (Fox), a CIA agent who experiences a crisis after an operation means she’s not around when her father passes away. In her depression, she signs up for a cutting-edge but rather dubious experimental project under the oversight of Hype (Medina). This involves her being given the ability to transform, physically, into one of fifteen different personas which have been implanted into her.

Once she has come to terms with this, it obviously offers a wealth of possibilities for use on missions. However, this is not entirely without a downside, not least the instability of one of the personas, Maeve (Miller). As a result, Tara is cautioned against using Maeve. She also discovers eventually that the whole operation is not as officially sanctioned as she  believed, and there’s an unexpected connection to her father. The ending doesn’t exactly tie everything up, leaving the film too open-ended for my tastes. Clearly, Marder was angling for this to spawn a franchise, but since work on this apparently started in 2018 (it seems to have begun as a series called Shifter, which premiered in November 2019), I suspect everyone involved has more probably moved on to other things by now.

With regard to the resources, it tries to be considerably more global than it can manage. Tara’s first mission post-implants is to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and this is followed up by one to central Africa. Except, in both cases, it’s painfully clear that the production likely never got outside the TMZ of Hollywood or wherever. There’s no reason things had to take place overseas: I could easily come up with domestic operations that could have used her talent just as well. The other problem is the 15 personas are only somewhat different versions of Tara. It would have been much more fun to see her occupying a broad range of shapes, skills and personalities.

It doesn’t help that the thunder has been stolen by Netflix series, In From the Cold, also about a spy with the ability to shapeshift. That came out in January 2022, while this was presumably sitting on a shelf somewhere. It leaves Agent of Death looking like a knock-off, even though that isn’t the case. Something of a pity, since this contains a decent amount of hand-to-hand action (and surprisingly little gun-play for an American show involving the CIA!), with Fox and the various actresses representing her personas, doing reasonable work. On the other hand, Fox’s acting tends to come over as wooden: for example, she’s never able to sell the death of her father adequately. While the time passed here, it’s telling that the cliffhanger ending neither excited nor annoyed me very much.

Dir: Matthew Marder
Star: Alanna Fox, Hugo Medina, Samantha Grace Miller, Richard Rivera

Rogue Agent, by Skyler Ramirez

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Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

This is a solid, no-nonsense combination of spy and science-fiction. Though, to be honest, it is skewed towards the former genre, with the latter mostly window-dressing. It wouldn’t take much to change the setting from a solar system whose ownership is disputed by a couple of galactic empires, to a city whose ownership is disputed by a couple of countries. The planet is Hudson, claimed both by the Star Kingdom of Prometheus and the Koratan Confederacy. Heather Kilgore is among the best agents of the Promethean King’s Order, and is dispatched to Hudson after the suspicious death of a man who had betrayed the Kingdom, former commander Connor Monroe

Her job is to find out the truth behind the event, but things are complicated in a number of ways. She and Connor had been lovers previously – while part of a mission, it might have been more than that. Also, she’s partnered with her former mentor, Tabitha Lowry. There’s history there as well, the pair having parted on poor terms during a previous case. They’re going to have to put the past aside, in order to figure out who – if anyone – was behind Monroe’s passing. And it quickly becomes clear that certain parties, with the Koratans the lead suspects, have a strong interest in not letting the truth be discovered by Heather and Tabitha, and will do anything to prevent this.

This is 258 pages, but felt shorter, which is generally a good sign, with a healthy quota of action, both given and received. Heather is undeniably able to take care of herself, even against multiple opponents, but is certainly not bulletproof. Indeed, at one point she has sit things out for several days, after getting hurt. She just chills in a remote cabin with a local kid, learning to appreciate the joys of things like fishing; this could have felt like needless padding, but ends up providing the heroine with additional depth. [The cover pic seems an accurate depiction of her as described; Kilgore is not exactly an under-the-radar kind of operative!]

My main complain was pacing. It felt as if the first eighty percent of the book contained eighty percent of the plot. Then the last twenty percent? Well, that contained eighty percent of the plot as well. As well as going from investigation to resolution in what seemed like just a few pages, it’s there where we discover Heather and Tabitha’s history. To be honest, this didn’t add particularly much, and seemed at odds with the very hard-nosed attitude shown by Heather. Since it wasn’t a secret between them, I would have brought it out far earlier. Despite such missteps down the stretch, this was an entertaining read, with a memorable central character, and a story I could see unfolding cinematically in my mind’s eye. The next volume is on my list for future consideration.

Author: Skyler Ramirez
Publisher: Persephone Entertainment Inc., available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the A Star Nation in Peril series.

Back in Action

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★★★
“Back to basics.”

The title could very well apply to star Diaz as well, since this is her first movie in over a decade. She retired in 2014 after Annie (which also starred Foxx), to focus on her family. But the actress, who will always be beloved here for her role in the best incarnation of Charlie’s Angels, was lured out for this genre mashup, which combines comedy, action, romance, family drama and thriller elements. She plays Emily, a former spy who retired fifteen years ago, and dropped out of sight. She’s now happily married to partner Matt (Foxx), with two teenage kids – the daughter being particularly obnoxious – and a house roughly the size of Vermont. Espionage must be a very lucrative business. 

This domestic bliss is, naturally, upended after the arrival of former handler Chuck (Chandler) with a warning, rapidly followed by assassins. Turns out, on their last mission, Matt lifted and subsequently hid, a device capable of controlling any electronic system. Everyone now wants to get their hands on this MacGuffin, which he stashed away on the estate of Emily’s estranged mother, Ginny (Close), back in England. Kids in tow, Matt and Emily have to drop off the grid, go there and secure the device before it falls into the hands of the bad guys, who intend to auction it off to the highest bidder. Needless to say, their children are surprised by this development. Not least the daughter, who was just grounded for using a fake ID.

Make no mistake, this is glossy, simple and unchallenging entertainment. But that’s perfectly fine. Not everything has to be significant or deep, and if this is unambitious, it doesn’t make it any less decent as something to throw on TV of a Sunday night. Diaz and Foxx both have charisma to spare, and together, their characters have a relationship which seems genuine. They love each other, while their children are stuck permanently in adolescent eye-roll mode, despising their parents taste in music, etc. It’s a salutory lesson, that in reality, Emily and Matt are far cooler, more interesting and highly skilled than their offspring would ever give them credit. The parent in me nods wisely at this family dynamic.

The action is decent, with some impressive bits of vehicular mayhem, and Diaz showing she can still move. But I particularly liked Ginny – I can only presume Helen Mirren was unavailable, as it’s a clone of her character from RED – and her charmingly ineffectual toy boy, Nigel (Jamie Demetriou). They deserve a franchise of their own. No less than nineteen writers were involved in the script. This has to be close to a record, and to be honest, you can tell, especially in the final act. There, things tend to become awfully convenient, as everybody whizzes around London in pursuit of the MacGuffin. With a bloated budget estimated at over $200 million, I’m just glad it wasn’t my money. I’ll happily take advantage of the results, however. 

Dir: Seth Gordon
Star:Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx, Kyle Chandler, Glenn Close

Black Doves

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★★★★
“Never bet against black.”

This was my favourite new television show of 2024, and might have been my pick overall. It’s a very strong mix of action and drama, with a fabulous cast of characters. I think I might have to go back to the first season of Killing Eve to find anything as good in our genre, and it’s not dissimilar in other ways too. Helen (Knightley) is married to Britain’s Minister of Defence, Wallace Webb (Buchan). But unknown to him, she is a Black Dove, mining information from him to pass on to her handler, Reed (Lancashire), for sale to the highest bidder. She’s also having an affair, but her lover is killed, along with two others, in murky circumstances. 

Reed calls in her top assassin, Sam (Whishaw), to protect Helen, fearing she might also be targeted. He has a history with Helen, dating back to before the birth of her children with Wallace. Things spiral out of control, involving the suspicious death of the Chinese ambassador, his missing daughter, a previous hit Sam botched, and Helen’s relentless pursuit of revenge, while trying to keep her family life intact. It’s a lot of balls to keep in the air, but the script does a fine job of avoiding confusion, with the wrap-up proving particularly admirable in its clarity. While I’ve read complaints about it being implausible, I have definitely seen worse. There’s room for both this, and more grounded spy shows like Slow Horses.

If you’re looking for strong female characters, there are a slew here, beyond Helen and Reed. Indeed, it feels like the entire underworld, criminal and intelligence, is run by women, while the “above ground” apparatus is male-dominated. The one I liked best was acerbic Irish killer Williams (Ella Lily Hyland), whose loyalties are uncertain at first. However, all the supporting cast are solid, and the relationship between Helen and Sam is among the best non-romantic ones I’ve seen recently between a man and a woman. Should mention: Sam’s gay. Very gay, to be honest. This annoyed the people that always annoys. But to me, it didn’t feel done for DEI purposes, or get in the way of the story.

It has been a while since we have seen Knightley here: Domino was the best part of two decades ago. Since then? Some slight sword-waving in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and that’s about it. However, they do a good job of making up for lost time [note: she is not pregnant for the bulk of her action, despite the picture!] There are an especially good pair of fights against assassins sent to take her out, the second of whom is a self-professed big fan. Williams and her female partners also unleash hell, though in her case it tends to be more bullets than punches. A critical and popular success, a second series was already commissioned before the first had aired. If it can maintain the same high standard – unlike Killing Eve – there’s a good chance it’ll be among the best of… well, probably 2026. Can’t wait.

Creator: Joe Barton
Star: Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw, Sarah Lancashire, Andrew Buchan

Canary Black

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★★★
“Gone, and soon forgotten.”

Both director Morel and star Beckinsale should be familiar names around here. The former directed Peppermint, the latter for the Underworld franchise. Indeed, I was a little surprised this wasn’t directed by Mr. Kate Beckinsale, Len Wiseman. But I guess he was too busy getting booted off Ballerina. Morel, who also directed Taken, is a perfectly adequate stand-in. This is more or less what I expected. A forgettable yet adequately amusing spy caper, with Beckinsale kicking moderate ass in pursuit of… [/checks notes] a computer virus which could potentially wipe out the whole Internet in selected countries. As I write this, two weeks before the US presidential election, nuking the Internet seems like a pretty good idea to me.

She plays Canary Black no, actually, Avery Graves, a globetrotting spy whose husband David (Friend) has no idea of her day job. If that sounds a tad familiar, I refer you to Role Play, which had a similar concept. Then, David gets kidnapped and used as leverage against Avery. She is ordered to liberate the “Canary Black” file of blackmail data, and hand it to David’s abductors, or he will pay the price. Needless to say, her boss Jarvis Hedlund (Stevenson, in one of his last roles) isn’t happy about his best agent going rogue. However, in one of a series of twists – some expected, some not – the file ends up containing the virus discussed above, and Avery must stop it from being released by the bad guys.

This all just about skates by, mostly on the strength of Beckinsale’s charisma. She keeps things watchable, and helps paper over a number of elements that would otherwise have you going, “Hang on a minute…” For instance, when Avery is breaking into a server farm, she flies in on a drone, which for some reason, is lit up like Times Square. The facility also lets you slap in a USB drive without authorization. My entry-level work PC won’t let me do that, and I don’t believe I have access to world-shattering computer viruses, the last time I checked. Naturally, it all ends with Avery rushing towards a computer as the upload progress bar crawls… ever… so… slowly towards a hundred percent. 

Morel handles the action with a professional eye, and considering she’s now in her fifties, Beckinsale isn’t bad. Though watching this the night after The Shadow Strays, the fights here seem like the participants are playing patty-cake in comparison. There’s a nice car chase through the streets of [/checks notes] Zagreb, but most of this is simply reasonably-made and thoroughly generic, and the lack of a memorable villain poses a problem. I couldn’t even tell you the main villain’s name, and his motivation appears to be purely mercenary, which is bad form for a bad guy. While I wasn’t bored, this is destined to be forgotten within a few weeks, and vanish into the black hole which is beyond the front page of Amazon Prime.

Dir: Pierre Morel
Star: Kate Beckinsale, Ray Stevenson, Rupert Friend, Jaz Hutchins