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The Stallone never rests, and continues in his relatively advanced age to make entertaining action Movies - first and foremost The Expendables franchise" -
which don’t always enjoy the same level of success. In this Movie, reminiscent of "48 hours" (Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy), "Red Heat" (Schwarzenegger
and Jim Belushi), and perhaps "Showdown In Little Tokyo" (Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee), two people coming from totally different worlds are forced to
overcome their differences and join forces in the fight against a common enemy.
This time, a hitman (Stallone) is sent along with his partner on a routine hit, but because he is a man of principles, he decides to let the only eyewitness live. He is targeted for assassination, he survives, but his partner is murdered. Apparently the original mark was a dirty cop, that even the detective who investigates the murder (Sung Kang, a less known actor, who appeared, among other things, in some of the "Fast and Furious" Movies) sheds no tear over. Instead he makes the veteran hitman an offer he can not refuse - to cooperate in an attempt to uncover the people who ordered both hits. The hitmaninitially refuses, but after he saves the detective’s life, he has no choice...
As they uncover the plot, using the "Lifting the Corporate Veil" process, the two learn about the differences between Korean Japanese, and the circumstances leading to the hitma to a life of crime, the detective falls for the hitman’s daughter (see "Tango and Cash"), while the bodies keep piling up...
And what about the almost mandatory Schwarzenegger joke? At the end of the Movie, during the final battle between him and actor Jason Momoa (who plays Keegan, a sadistic and ruthless killer), the Stallone asks, "What are we, Vikings"? Momoa, in case you didn’t know, is the actor who inherited the role of Conan the Barbarian from Schwarzenegger.
So it's not an original idea, but the execution is not bad at all. Stallone, who stand the test of age lot more gracefully than his good friend Schwarzenegger, in an unusually dark role. Kang is a bit too austere. So the action is there, the humor is there, what else do we need? |