Blu-ray review: ‘Survivor’ with Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan

Survivor, directed by V For Vendetta’s James McTigue, is a pretty standard thriller that simply revolves around smart people doing really stupid things. That’s pretty much the only way the movie can move forward, because if these characters were really as smart as we’re told they are, they probably wouldn’t be doing half the things they do to keep the chase going.

Milla Jovovich, taking a break from the never-ending Resident Evil series, stars as Foreign Service Officer Kate Abbott, who is assigned to the U.S. embassy in London. There, she works with Bill Talbot (Robert Forster) to flag visa applications to make sure terrorists don’t get into the U.S. legally. When a doctor applies for one, Kate’s Spidey Senses start tingling and she thinks something’s up since he has a background in chemicals. Bill thinks she’s just overly cautious and let’s the doc go through.

The visa team go off to celebrate Bill’s birthday, but he doesn’t show up. Instead, the restaurant blows up, conveniently while Kate was outside. A deadly assassin (Pierce Brosnan) sees that she survived the blast and tries to kill her. He shoots and misses, thus starting the 90-minute chase that takes us from London to New York.

Despite a stellar cast that also includes Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett and James D’Arcy, the film is not an actor’s movie. McTigue is all about catching the action, so the film is really just a series of set-pieces leading up to Kate’s confrontation with the deadly assassin who is nicknamed “The Watchmaker.” They actually come face-to-face several times, but since he’s so bad at being this incredibly gifted assassin, she keeps escaping.

McTigue, who cut his teeth with the Wachowski siblings, certainly knows how to capture stylish action and it’s great to see him paired with Jovovich. However, Philip Shelby’s script is simply awful and that must be the reason why Sony turned the project down. There’s plot holes and clunky dialogue throughout. It kind of makes you wish they could have just thrown out the dialogue and tried to make 90 minutes of Jovovich and Brosnan chasing each other without speaking.

Survivor hits Blu-ray on Tuesday from Alchemy, with 10 minutes of deleted scenes (including a shower sex scene with McDermott and Jovovich - can’t have that in a PG-13 movie!) and a 5-minute behind-the-scenes piece. Yes, that is Rocky producer Irwin Winkler talking about how great this script is.

Survivor is only fun escapism for 90 minutes if you don’t think too much about it. Seriously, don’t think for a second while watching it, otherwise you won’t enjoy it.