This movie was pretty much what I expected or rather hoped for. It was a fun adventure/action rollercoaster plain and simple. This is one of those, rare nowadays, movies that are meant to entertain plain and simple. Two hours of adventure, action and twists barely held together by a rudimentary story and no woke rubbish or bullshit preaching. The latter is probably what rendered it a 40% rotten “critics” score on woke tomatoes while the audience gave it a 90% fresh score. As almost always a rotten score on woke tomatoes is an indication that it is a movie worthwhile watching.
The story, as can be seen from the movie blurb, is a treasure hunt a la Indiana Jones. It starts off by introducing the main character, Nathan, in a few brief scenes where Nathan bungles up a heist being perpetrated by his brother after which they are involuntarily separated.
Quick forward to present time and the main story takes off with Nathan being persuaded by Sullivan to embark on a hunt for an immeasurable treasure. Not exactly the newest or freshest of stories but if it works don’t fix it.
Pretty much everyone in this movie is a self-centered scoundrel with little to no care for anyone except themselves. Thus the action and treasure hunting is regularly interrupted by twists and betrayals. No one will claim that this movie has an elaborate and intelligent story. It does not have to. It is just meant to hold the action together.
I quite liked the main actors. Sullivan did a good job of being the blasé, self-centered scoundrel, Nathan of being the somewhat naive wannabe treasure hunter and Braddock was quite cool, and sexy (hey, I’m a guy), as the baddie. Antonio Banderas was Antonio Banderas although I was saddened by his premature exit from the hunt.
Overall the action was nice although the scenes in, and out of, the airplane was the usual unrealistic Hollywood action. Although that was overshadowed with the ship carrying helicopter scenes towards the end which was taking unrealism to new levels. But I didn’t really care because it was fun silliness. The moment they started to carry those ships away I started to hope that the writer would go for the silly and obvious stunt involving black powder. Yes unrealistic but there is no denying the coolness factor.
As far as I am concerned this was two hours well spent. The ending scene clearly suggested that the producers hoped to make a sequel. I would definitely watch it but with all the people lamenting the fact that someone dared to make a movie simply for entertainment without a profound (and boring) story or bullshit preaching in it that might not happen. It did make about four times its budget at the box office though so maybe.
