SAS: Red Notice (2021) film

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Star – Sam Heughan My Rating – *** Genre – Action Run Time – 2 hours 10 Minutes. Certificate – 18R Country – U.K. SO a big budget action movie from the United Kingdom, not the sort of movie we make here anymore. James Bond, of course, is made elsewhere. The only others I can recall are a chunk of one the Mission Impossible movies, the rather good Children of Men (2006) and V For Vendetta (2005) and the not so good London has Fallen (2016). These days we just do costume dramas or gritty council estate low budget stuff, the days of David Lean long gone. SAS: Red Notice, based on the book by real life SAS hero Andy McNabb (so he says), is the first big action movie since the Coronavirus crisis to just give up on a lucrative cinema release and accept streaming is the only way to drag some money back. The latest Bond Film has been put back three times now, Tenet the only huge action budget movie to risk the multiplex as the virus backed off last summer. Bond is very relevant here as the handsome square - jawed Sam Heughan, the star here, was the favorite to take over from Daniel Craig next year. But political correctness has gripped the movie industry by the balls and the next Bond could well be female and not white. They tried this here with Dr Who but the ratings didn’t hold up very long. Clive Owen had similar Bond hype back in the day but when they bailed on him he went away and did the rather tongue-in-cheek Bond action spoof ‘Shoot Em Up’, a film you really should see as like nothing else out there. ===Cast=== • Sam Heughan as Tom Buckingham • Hannah John-Kamen as Dr. Sophie Hart • Ruby Rose as Grace Lewis • Andy Serkis as George Clements • Tom Hopper as Declan • Tom Wilkinson as William Lewis • Owain Yeoman as Oliver "Olly" Lewis • Ray Panthaki as Prime Minister Atwood • Noel Clarke as Major Bisset • Anne Reid as Charlotte • Jing Lusi as Zada • Sarah Winter as Colleen • Caroline Boulton as Olivia • Richard McCabe as Callum • Douglas Reith as Sir Charles Whiteside • Dylan Smith as Alex • Aymen Hamdouchi as Kenan • Grant Crookes as General Major Crookes • Tim Fellingham as Bryce ===Plot=== George Clements (Andy Serkis), a sort of black ops mercenary go between for the British government, has hired a team of ‘contractors’ to clear a rural village in Georgia to ‘speed up’ a British dam construction project there, a young woman filming the atrocity and putting it online. The Prime Minster (Ray Panthaki) is put in a spot as an investigation will reveal the operation and kill team are linked to the British state and there go - to team for dirty work. The PM will have to order a Red Notice kill order on the team that just so happen to be living in London in a big house, the group a bit of a family operation and led by William Lewis (Tom Wilkinson) and his highly trained and dangerous daughter Grace (Ruby Rose). The cleanup is messy with a few lose ends, Clements in the SAS ops room as his role is rather duplicitous and tasked with running the Red Notice operation. SAS man Tom Buckingham (Sam Heughan) is introduced to us here as he tried to impress his beautiful doctor girlfriend Sophie (Hannah John-Kamen) with his cuts and bruises in causticity. She knows what his job is but unhappy with his cold nature around death and relationships, chalk and cheese. The main members of the kill team family are not dead, of course, and decide to go to plan B to try and get out of the fatal corner of being dead men and women walking, deciding to hijack the Eurostar train instead under the sea. But guess who is on the train with his girl, a square- jawed SAS man on the way to Paris for some interrupted R&R.. ===Results=== So this is very much a politically correct movie of our times, the terrorists not Muslim, Irish or of color and a brown Prime Minister although the beautiful and masculine psycho female terrorist is nothing new of course. Ruby Rose is perfectly striking in that role. As far as I know there is no known terrorist threat out there looking like a bunch of well trained white lower English middle-class people. It’s Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, the British version with cheaper looking train sets and plenty of action clichés. It’s a box ticking movie in that sense and over the top and silly at times but we don’t mind that with action movies. The acting is tongue in cheek bad but again we don’t mind about that either in this genre. The twist is not expected as far as the person goes after some skilled distraction but that type of twist common in this type of movie, what the audience it’s aiming at wants. I can’t say Scottish actor Heughan is the next Bond as he was very stiff here and rather too bulky and, perhaps, the rumor grew out of his anticipated role in Red Notice, the film that the movie press called the Bond audition tape, rather than any real noise from the Broccoli estate. But he does the job in the way American style action heroes do and so suitable big screen presence. Idris Elba remains the best Bond option for me after Chadwick Boseman’s terrible death. It’s a silly slick action movie that’s flawed but fun but not one you would watch again. ===RATINGS=== Imdb.com 4.5 /10.0 (1,435 votes) Rottentomatos.com –% critic’s approval Metacritic.com – % critic’s approval ===Trailer=== https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2712715289?playlistId=tt4479380&ref_=tt_ov_vi