This certainly is the epitome of dumb fun: a triumph of star wattage and slick filmmaking, over credibility and plot logic.
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| Just as Harley (Dwayne Johnson, left) and Booth (Ryan Reynolds) find one of Cleopatra's fabled jeweled eggs, somebody else unexpectedly arrives ... and insists on taking it. |
The result is surprisingly entertaining, even when things become ridiculous (which happens rather frequently).
One must admire the cheek of a scripter who stages his third act in a long-dormant Nazi lair in Argentina: a setting so strikingly reminiscent of Indiana Jones, that co-star Ryan Reynolds cements the moment by whistling a few bars of John Williams’ “Raiders March.”
(This is just one of Thurber’s cheeky nods to other movie moments.)
Events begin in Rome, at a posh museum bannering the display of one of Cleopatra’s three fabled jeweled eggs (akin to a Fabergé egg, but the size of a football). American FBI agent John Hartley (Johnson), on loan to assist Interpol Inspector Urvashi Das (Ritu Arya), has credible evidence that master thief Nolan Booth (Reynolds) will attempt to steal the treasure on this very day.
Hartley’s intel comes from a shadowy underworld figure known only as The Bishop, who tends to play both sides against the middle. Even so…
…the information proves accurate, which leads to a stunning foot-chase between Hartley and Booth, choreographed by supervising stunt coordinator George Cottle, and tightly edited for slam-bang intensity by Julian Clarke and Michael L. Sale. This sequence is worthy of Jackie Chan and James Bond, with parkour free-running, jumps, falls, kicks, punches and an ingenious melee on some metal scaffolding.
Alas, Booth escapes. With the egg.
But not for long. Hartley and Das find him at home in Bali (!), where the latter retrieves the egg and promises Booth a “special” sort of incarceration.
But wait! A third player enters the mix: a mysterious woman (Gal Gadot) who swaps eggs and — oh, the irony! — pins this switcheroo on Hartley. Worse yet, when an enraged Das investigates, she’s told the FBI never heard of him. She therefore arrests Hartley and sends him to a “special” prison.
Which turns out to be a Russian gulag, where he winds up in the same cell as Booth.
At this point, both are forced to acknowledge the obvious — “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” — and they become reluctant colleagues.
Booth’s goal, all along, has been to obtain all three eggs. Their female adversary now has one; the second is known to be locked in the private vault of a crime lord improbably named Sotto Voce (Chris Diamantopoulos), who lives in a lavish estate in Valencia, Spain, and likes to strangle his adversaries.
The third egg’s whereabouts remain unknown. (Supposedly.)
All this froth goes down smoothly because Thurber knows how to write to his actors’ strengths. Reynolds’ Booth is a smart-assed motor mouth, forever dropping insults, caustic asides and wisecracks, usually at Hartley’s expense; Johnson’s tolerant patience and world-weary eye rolls are just as amusing.
Reynolds displays deft comic timing, often parceling out a sentence in three or four short bursts, interrupted by brief pauses that allow for maximum snark; his “who me?” expressions of faux bafflement also get significant play.
Johnson does the heavy lifting — literally — and his bludgeoning heroics are well displayed during the gulag sequence. But he also makes ample use of that mocking twinkle in his eye, which in this case suggests that Hartley trusts Booth about as far as he could throw him. (Well, this is Dwayne Johnson … in which case, maybe not even that far.)
Gadot, fetchingly attired by costume designer Mary E. Vogt — particularly during her infiltration of Sotto Voce’s costume party — easily holds her own amid this free-flowing testosterone. She’s appropriately sly, impish, cunning, resourceful, and — somehow — forever two or three steps ahead of the boys.
And, lest we forget, this is Wonder Woman, which perhaps excuses the notion that she’d be able to hold her own in a skirmish with Johnson.
Arya is feisty and intrepid as the frequently aggrieved Inspector Das; Diamantopoulos’ Sotto Voce is one-dimensional, but he’s appropriately brutal and nasty.
This film’s true heroes are production designer Andy Nicholson, and art directors Rory Bruen and Jason Knox-Johnson, who fabricated all of this story’s exotic locations in Atlanta, Georgia, when Covid derailed Thurber’s planned international shoots. As just one example, the Russian gulag was built convincingly in the Atlanta Metro Studios parking lot (!).
Cinematographer Markus Förderer makes it all look real, and his many swooping aerial (drone?) shots add considerable pizzazz to car chases and other melees. Steve Jablonsky’s lusty score is the icing on the cake.
This film won’t win any points for originality, but it boasts plenty of style and is precisely what Thurber intended to make: a good, old-fashioned adventure romp.
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