In early June, the new movie “The Interception” starring Elsa Pataky was released on Netflix. The former Spanish model and star of several parts of “Fast and the Furious” played a brave captain of the US Army in a typical B-movie. Read the review below if the picture is worth your attention.

Genre action, drama
Directed by Matthew Reilly
Cast : Elsa Pataky, Luke Bracey, Aaron Glennan, Mayence Mehta, Paul Caesar
Netflix release
Release year 2022
IMDb website

Captain JJ Collins (Elsa Pataky) arrives at SBX-1, the US nuclear early warning station in the Pacific. The girl returned to her former service amid a big scandal with the previous boss. A well-known general was fired after her complaints of sexual harassment. On the first day, the military platform is captured by terrorists. They need a command control panel, which the main character managed to recapture. Now she and two other soldiers must prevent criminals from launching stolen nuclear missiles at the United States.

The uncomplicated script for “Interception” was written by a pair of newcomer director Matthew Reilly and “30 Days of Night” and “I, Frankenstein” writer Stuart Beatty. The emphasis was on a strong, courageous female heroine opposing the system and men, deliberately weak male characters and a couple of America’s pressing problems.

The idea was to get a strong retro action movie with an emphasis on modern realities and feminism. But it didn’t turn out the way I wanted. Therefore, viewers will have to watch for an hour and a half to watch a mediocre and faded parody even of the action movies of the 90s. Although they sinned with the same mediocre scripts with an abundance of two-word remarks, they did not try to be serious and did not touch important social issues. “Interception” constantly flaunts complex topics, ineptly weaving hard feminism and racial problems of society into the story of the nuclear attack on the United States.

The budget of “Interception” is 15 million dollars. This is not much, but it is also impossible to attribute the tape to cheap films. It looks like the lion’s share of the money was spent on computer graphics of military facilities, because there are a minimum of actors, the rooms are tiny and almost the whole story takes place in them. The episodic and secondary roles have been greatly reduced. The extras were “got rid of” by allegedly poisoning the staff of a huge military platform with carbon monoxide, so for most of the story, viewers will have to watch six or seven characters.

Against the background of a deliberately serious presentation, the cameo of Chris Hemsforth-Thor looks very strange, supposedly adding comedy to the film. The first such frames are confusing, and a few successful jokes cause not a smile, but an even greater misunderstanding of what is happening. The famous actor is listed as one of the producers of the film, and he is also the husband of actress Elsa Pataky. Both of these factors answer questions about how the Marvel movie star was lured into a project of such low quality.

The acting skills of all the characters in “Interception” do not even come close to a few lines of the aforementioned Hemsforth. Both Pataki herself and her main antagonist Alexander Kessel (Luke Bracey) look artificial and uninteresting. Unexpectedly, one of the wards of the main villain pleases the actor. He also jokes well sometimes. In general, you don’t believe the characters, which means that the connection between the story and the viewer is not being established and empathy does not arise.

Does not add positive and full of holes in the plot. The story is full of illogical actions of the characters, pianos in the bushes and important understatements that do not explain certain decisions of the characters in the finale. Good and bad, they all act strange and crazy, do big stupid things, and five minutes later they are talking about it themselves. The villains could kill the heroine almost immediately, and then ten more times after that, but each time they justified their inaction with some kind of stupidity, and then they regretted it and promised that next time we would definitely kill.

At “Interception” everything is bad and with musical accompaniment. This is one of the few pictures where you notice the melodies from the first minutes of the picture, and then you constantly hear the music in different scenes. But this happens not because she is beautiful or in the subject, but, on the contrary. Pieces of ugly orchestral music are interrupted by insane guitar cuts. All this is poorly glued together and painfully presses on the ears.

Against the background of this wild strange madness, the few action scenes and the brutal killings of some villains please. The heroine effectively sticks a gun into the enemy’s eye, and no less spectacularly tears off the terrorist’s head with barbed wire. They write that Elsa Pataky was seriously engaged and preparing for this role, so she can give odds to Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren and other action movie stars from the past as her physical training. It would be better if she improved her acting skills.