Academy Award® winner Gary Oldman (“The Dark Knight”) stars as a vicious crime boss out to kill Nick, the lone witness set to testify against him. He hires a mysterious female motorcycle courier (Olga Kurylenko, “Quantum of Solace”) to unknowingly deliver a poison-gas bomb to slay Nick. But after she rescues Nick from certain death, the duo must confront an army of ruthless hired killers in order to survive the night.
There’s this unique market for low-budget action cinema. It’s the lion’s share of gas station DVDs and Wal-Mart bargain bin shopping. Lionsgate makes plenty of lower budgeted films to fill their collection, even mastering the low-budget franchise to a scientific degree (with films like “Escape Plan,” “The Expendables,” etc.) “The Courier” is another entry into gas station DVDs with a premise that, on paper, excites but fails to do more than occasionally titillate on delivery.
Olga Kurylenko stars as the Courier. When she drops a package off at a super-secret witness testimony and fails to accidentally kill the witness, she has to save his life. Gary Oldman plays a crime lord trying to kill the witness against him in court. The testimony happens in London through a remote video session underneath a parking garage. Gary Oldman’s just in New York… yelling into his phone and smiling occasionally. With the parking garage shut down around them, they have to fight their way out in order to save the day. We never learn Kurylenko’s name.
This movie bears the hallmarks of all things intelligently shot (ie. cheaply – not a bad thing) and makes the most of what it’s got. Oldman chews through his few scenes with vicious delight. Amit Shah emotes every beat he can squeeze out of the classic action info dumps. Craig Conway stands out among them all as someone who was given so very little and tackles the role full tilt. Kurylenko, for her part, fits in among the crowd as one of the tamer personalities in this film. Those standout performances make the film much more digestible.
A movie like this really rests on its action sequences and villainous characters. I found the majority of the fighting very standard quality with lots of cutting around the punches. The cuts came so fast it became hard to track at one point. There’s no sense of geography in this parking garage so we really don’t know if the protagonist is truly being hunted. Effects-wise, the producers spent their budget on a few key death sequences. Those spraying guts and violent deaths earned my raucous laugh.
It’s a movie that could easily improve in a myriad of ways, but fails to do so and thus leaves you wanting more. Ignore the hokey setup and the cheesy dialogue. This is the kind of movie where even just one visual gimmick would’ve affected the entire film and raised its rating by an entire star (I only have five…) Instead, the low budget filmmaking felt more like sacrifices than ingenious moments capitalized upon. I watched this movie, sure, but I do not quite remember it. I recommend for people looking to pass the time. It would make a fantastic airplane movie or VOD selection.
Available on Blu-ray™ (plus Digital), DVD, and Digital January 21st
