This certainly is the epitome of dumb fun: a triumph of star wattage and slick filmmaking, over credibility and plot logic.
 |
| 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.
