SAS: Red Notice deserves a red card
Touted as a one-man audition for the soon-to-be-vacant role of 007, SAS: RED NOTICE does at least do a decent enough job of showcasing star Sam Heughan’s action lead credentials. After all, if he can inject some life into something this bland, imagine what he could do with better material than a boil-in-the-bag ready meal action thriller.
The movie opens with a private security force called The Black Swans, a family firm headed by William Lewis (Tom Wilkinson) but spearheaded by his ruthless daughter Grace (Ruby Rose), exterminating an entire village in Georgia to enable a pipeline to be built through it after the residents refused to sell up. When the attack is leaked to the internet via mobile phone footage, fearing their involvement in the whole affair, as well as that of British energy conglomerate who owned the pipeline, coming to light the British Government put out a Red Notice on The Black Swans for the SAS to take them out. But when Grace manages to evade the SAS assault, she plans to exact a terrible vengeance.
Following the operation, Tom Buckingham III (Heughan) decides to take his girlfriend (Hannah John-Kamen) to Paris via the Channel Tunnel, intending to pop the question. Only as luck would have it, the couple board the very train that Grace has decided to hijack.
So far, then, if you’ve been keeping score, it’s stolen its set-up from THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH and it action set-pieces from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, DIE HARD and, chillingly, UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY. Despite the quality (or otherwise) of those borrowed clothes, the film only ever manages to wear them like an awkward teenager borrowing his dad’s suit for a job interview.
It’s packed with train-based action movie cliches, dispensable henchmen, testosterone-driven, irony-free dialogue and a spectacular lack of awareness of how bland and repetitive it all is. The limitations of the budget are also pretty apparent given none of the major action takes place when the train is in motion, only once it’s stationary, marooned in the centre of the channel tunnel. That action, when it comes, is adequately shoot-’em-up, but the direction throughout the film is flat and disinterested and some of the writing is laugh-out-loud terrible, the kind of dialogue that might – just – work on the page but never once sounds like something an actual real person would ever say. It’s a very drab film, too, with little in the way of visual interest
It tries to be clever and complex by weaving a web of double and triple crosses reaching right up into the higher echelons of the British Government but it’s so cack-handed that you’ll end up confused as to who’s doing what to whom at any given point in the movie except, of course, for our square-jawed hero whose loyalties are never in doubt.
Aside from Heughan and Rose, nobody else gets much of note to do. Noel Clarke stomps around looking mean and moody with his trademark Serious Acting ScowlTM in full effect while Andy Serkis hams it up and Tom Hopper dumbs it down. Hannah John-Kamen, though, suffers the most, saddled with the most unconvincing romantic character development since Padme Amidala found the wholesale slaughter of a village of Sand People such a turn-on in STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES.
SAS: RED NOTICE can’t even homage disaster movie tropes without falling at the first hurdle. Early on in the train journey, we’re introduced to Charlotte (Anne Reid), who’s heading to Paris with her husband of fifty years. It feels like a significant moment, but it’s not because we never see her husband (he’s said to be off to the loo) nor do we hear from or see her again after all the shouting and shooting is done. It’s just more padding for a film that’s already too long as it is, so long in fact that the end credits can’t be bothered to wait for the movie to finish and start early, running across the screen during a massive expository wrap-up exercise.
Based on the novel by Andy McNab, a real-life SAS hero who underwent torture during his tour of duty – although possibly nothing as brutal as seeing his work transformed into this lacklustre, cheaply televisual potboiler – SAS: RED NOTICE is the latest in a long line of ‘Sky Original Movies’ which will pass the time but don’t really pass muster.
