This medium-budget, moderately silly action-thriller, starring a stubbly Dominic Cooper as a special forces tough guy, is partly redeemed by its cheerfully outrageous finale involving a chase-slash-shootout with a car and a double-decker London bus somewhere in the countryside. That’s good value.
Cooper plays Stratton, a member of Britain’s elite Special Boat Service, the equivalent of the US Navy Seals. Perhaps there should have been a cameo here for our most famous former SBS officer, Paddy Ashdown. After a calamity on his last mission, which involved the heart-wrenching loss of his American partner, Stratton is assigned to clear up the mess. His boss, whom he calls “ma’am” in the traditional manner, is played by Connie Nielsen with a very bizarre British accent she may have learned from watching Judi Dench doing M.
An ex-FSB Russian has stolen biological weaponry from the Iranians for his own use, and Stratton is going to have to get it back. But someone on his team is a rat, feeding information to the enemy. There would appear to be two candidates, but the fact that they are played by two actors from a certain, famous movie franchise might well give you a clue as to which is on the side of evil. Derek Jacobi phones in his preposterous small role as Stratton’s grumpy old dad.
