Official Tagline: A Foreign Service Officer in London tries to prevent a terrorist attack set to hit New York, but is forced to go on the run when she is framed for crimes she did not commit.
Written by: Philip Shelby
Directed by: James McTeigue
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Dylan McDermott and Pierce Brosnan
Survivor is an action / thriller flim staring Milla Jovovich as Kate Abbott, the newly installed head of security at the American embassy in London. Writer Phillip Shelby attempts to set up Kate as a rebel by having her ride a motorcycle to work and have some supporting characters talk in hushed whispers about her past as a possible CIA agent. Dylan McDermott is Kate’s boss, Sam Parker who spends most of the film filling us in how what an expert Kate is at security. He has to do this because we see very little evidence of Kate’s superior abilities in the film as she spends most of her time running and looking confused.
The main plot has Kate on the run from the British authorities and her own agency after surviving a bomb that kills several of her coworkers. To make matter worse, Kate is also chased by Nash “The Watchmaker”, a ruthless hired assassin played by Pierce Brosnan who always seems to be one step ahead of the authorizes, but one step behind the clueless Kate.
I know by the tone of my comments that you may think I hated this movie and that is not the case. I think Survivor is a sort of good action movie that could have been a really good action movie if writer Philip Shelby and director James McTeigue had spent some time creating a more logical plot and had made some attempt at making Kate a likeable and capable character. Poor Milla Jovovich is not give a lot to work with and we know from her roles in other movies that she can kick ass on screen, but in Survivor she is more helpless victim, than action hero.
Pierce Brosnan gives a good performance, but even his Nash character, which is built up to be this almost mythical assassin, does some stupid things that seem out of character. That is the main problem with Survivor, the film makers were too lazy to create a solid story, with fully realized characters and instead took easy choices to have the characters do dumb things to move the plot along.
Not a terrible movie, but could have been much better. I guess we will have to look forward to Resident Evil 6 and the next November Man installment to see Milla and Pierce kick proper ass.
Screen Writer Ink
Fade In Is Just The Beginning
