Make no mistake: this action thriller is a mangled, dreary, unlovely mess and so much less than the sum of its parts – despite relatively blameless supporting turns from Robert De Niro and John Leguizamo. There’s a more culpably hammy performance from Jamie Foxx, who rocks a ginormous, weirdly contoured afro so bizarre that it’s almost worth the price alone. (He is also one of many executive producers on the project.) But Foxx’s tonsorial effort is not enough to counteract the fact that this is a pretty lousy film, only worth it if you like “sneerwatching”.
None of the big names mentioned above play the lead here. Instead, the hero is one Nash Cavanaugh (a name that sounds generated by an AI bot), as incarnated by a typically lumpen Scott Eastwood. Cavanaugh is a former soldier who was once drawn into the cult created by Foxx’s Leon Prudhomme, also known by his much cooler cult leader moniker, the Bokushi (“pastor” in Japanese). It turns out Prudhomme was originally bankrolled by De Niro’s Ashburn, a shady government agent who had hoped to create a mercenary army. But the Bokushi has instead created his own private Jonestown, full of other ex-soldiers sold on his self-help preaching about how PTSD need not define them, or something like that. What makes him so charismatic is never well defined, but presumably the veterans must be smitten with his R&B-inflected gospel crooning with a special backup band – a vanity moment that’s pure cringe.
Viewers will have to pay close attention to parse out all the different timelines that the diced editing keeps flipping back and forth between. In the film’s present, Cavanaugh is approached by Ashburn to infiltrate the Bokushi’s compound with other secret agents before the FBI messes everything up with their own raid. Cavanaugh is hoping he’ll find his wife Evoli (Nora Arnezeder), who is either still part of the cult and will therefore need deprogramming, or is being held against her will. The murkily lensed climax involves, judging by the sound effects, a lot of rushing water and explosions, because only primal forces of such power could vanquish the Bokushi’s mighty hairdo.
• Tin Soldier is on Prime Video from 23 July.
