A film with both John Cena and Jackie Chan? A must watch I thought given my love of the action genre as well as both actors individually. Unfortunately, pretty much all of it is underdeveloped and weightless.
Cena's and Chan's first interaction verges on being cringey. It all just feels so forced and unnatural. We don't really know any of the charecters. We don't really know why they're doing what they're doing and there are no apparent stakes since their both isolated from both the hostages and the main villains. I just have no reason to care. After they sort out their issues with one another, I have another issue which arises.
The comedy felt bizarre to me because the film set itself up, and often throughout, takes itself so seriously. Whether it's the tense dominating music, the child near the landmines at the beginning or the threatening of the lives of hostages, etc, it feels weird when then they're cracking the stupidest of jokes or doing dumb interpretations of animals. It all felt a bit incongruent for me and I didn't know whether to treat it like
Heads of State (2025) or
Fury (2014). I think it should have just chosen a lane and stuck with it.
The second half got even worse with the stupidity and "humour". Not only undermining the stakes and seemingly the whole point of the film, but also felt like an inferior rehash of the Heads of State dynamic. Overall, I just couldn't buy into this film, either as an action thriller, or as a buddy comedy. It started off as a strong idea with high stakes and deadly mercenaries, but it quickly collapsed into clowning around and bubble bath fights. Not my cup of tea.
