Aditya Kaushik

Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam, Oscar Issac and many more actors which could have been the perfect ingredients for a tightly wound action drama gourmet dish but alas what we get here is a 2 day old pizza lying in the fridge. As if the problems in the linearly written & predictable plot were not enough on top of that we get lazy direction. From the starting the film gets your hopes high and promises you that something unpredictable or great is going to happen but ends up flat out. It explores the overly used special forces veteran angle and how they try to go against the code by which they lead their lives. A group of 5 ex special forces has served every mission with complete allegiance even getting their hands dipped in violence whenever necessary:(some of them as high as 43 kills), but after retiring the government which they served so dearly isn't even giving them enough to survive on. Pretty good and thought proviking issue right? But the movie shows it in the most lukewarm way possible. They plan to rob the robber in the form of a high end cartel boss somewhere in South America. The loot turns out in a sloppy way and soon greed gets the better of them. They try to escape with more money they had planned to carry ( almost 250 mil.) and by the heavy payload their chopper crashes behind enemy lines. The course of events which happen after this are pretty much garden variety as you can imagine. The action sequences although realistic have some sort of half assery associated to them. The pleasant things in the movie are the beautiful jungles of Brazil ( I think), also it points out about the greed of the middle aged common man. Some scenes do bring a smile on ur face like when Benny (Garrett Hedlund) is feeling cold and his crew doesn't let him light a fire as it might attract attention. Fed up he starts lighting 100 dollar bills and then eventually burns an entire suitcase of money. In conclusion watch this if you really want to, if you watch it as serendipity you might get disappointed. Watchability Score: 2/5 Direction: JC Chandor Screenplay: JC Chandor, Mark Boal