Reviews

Usually the action in these types of films tends to be very realistic and this one doesn't disappoint in that area. All of the action is done nicely in co-operation with the army, it looks good and credible. The problem I have with this film is the overall story - an elite group of soldiers on a rescue mission and when it goes bad they create a backup plan (considering the mission type seems highly unlikely that they already didn't have one) is to start climbing over mountains to head to safety. And in the process their chasers keep coming at them by running straight into their line of fire again and again failing every attempt, never changing their strategy or attack method. Even if we leave the lateral out it gets worse. The film portraits the difficulties of professional soldiers on a run but at no point do they show or consider that the same difficulties also apply to their chasers (who don't have such military training), they just keep popping up never tired or low on ammo (this also applies to special forces, reload anyone?). Considering it's a movie we can expect the previous faults and forgive them. Still I was hoping for a more tactical approach from the special forces, not just running around sacrificing men until they run out.

I' try to keep it short and to the point. The action scenes were boring and the only thing that made this movie watchable was the star cast and some one-liner jokes. Don't get me wrong, I thought there were some good scenes in this movie but not enough to make a full length motion picture worthwhile. I suggest you (re)watch Grindhouse and Desperado instead of this mess of poor gore action and politics.

PS! Why does Machete have 6 throwing knives and a bunch of machetes under his coat when he only uses the one in his hand?! Also Segal has gained enough weight to not be suitable for any action apparently so all scenes that required any movement at all were filmed with a double from behind and the 1 minute end fight was really boring. So my question is why give him any martial arts scenes to begin with?