1 out of 5
Directed by: James McTeigue
Something happened here. Somewhere between the creator’s vision, the writer’s script, the movie the actors were making, the edit… something happened, and Survivor became a very confused, poorly executed movie. From the opening scenes, which feel uncomfortably entirely green-screened, and the closing credits, which suddenly become jingoistic and also want to remind you of director James McTeigue’s Matrix ties, the movie has no set sense of identity; no plan.
There are inoffensive movies that kind of pass the time; and there are / were a glut of films decades back that did low level thrills for 90 minutes; and by 2015 – the time of this movie – the streamers had already picked up that spot to a degree, with TV arguably filling the role with your average police procedural now able to execute on the production / visual level of those earlier-era films; and regardless of the space where you see such inoffensive output, it, y’know, does its job.
There are bad movies, which occupy their own particular corner, and depending on your definition of bad, are either enjoyable, and/or you know the movie wasn’t made for you, and you can stop watching.
Survivor falls into an uncomfortable netherworld of feeling undecided. Its improbable-hero-saves-the-world story is your dime-a-dozen thriller, and Milla Jovovich as the super duper US government visa inspector in that hero role is a fun pick, giving her an adjacent template to her Resident Evil character; while Pierce Brosnan is similarly well cast as a terse assassin, doing a mirror-universe James Bond thing. Writer Philip Selby delivers a spin on his Robert Ludlum novels; director James McTeigue hadn’t really found a role for himself after V for Vendetta, but one imagines he could add some pizzazz to a border criss-crossing thriller. And yet, all of this operates in its own sphere. The film perhaps needs to reach for some larger set pieces that its $20 million budget couldn’t afford alongside its stars’ salaries, however, only a small percentage of the movie would have been affected by that; there’re like 100 minutes of cat and mouse thrills to play with prior to that that fall incredibly flat because none of them are pursued, or shot with dedication: every set piece lasts for only a few minutes or is nondescript; and in the generic office buildings or alleys where we have clipped, clandestine conversations or brief scuffles, the former have that green-screened “we’re not even in the same room” vibe, and the latter are Taken-edited to a point where none of the talented folks you’ve cast necessarily feel relevant to the movie.
Which is the overall take: no scene or moment in the movie is necessary. That’s… rough.
Survivor concerns Security Service Special Agent Kate Abbott (Jovovich) rejecting the visa application of a guy with a very suspicious accent (Roger Rees), and thus making her target #1 in a secret evil person plan to blow things up, only now the government thinks Kate likes blowing things up too, so she runs around a lot, last-minute-escaping from both good guys and bad guys.
