Interceptor

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Interceptor sees Captain J.J. Collins defend a remote missile interceptor station against a mercenary terrorist strike, with 16 major American population centres on the line. I found the storyline in this film that was most interesting was the one that wasn't always given the most focus nor was it strongly written throughout. But the discussion around sexual misconduct within the American military perpetrated against female soldiers was well voiced. It comes at a very timely moment in the social media age, in which female vets are finding their voice online and sharing these sorts of stories; so it gave a lot more weight to the protagonist to see her have such a serious issue to have grappled with. The immense courage Collins displays in exposing what she went through and then enduring the abuse and toxic fallout from doing the right thing is far more fascinating than any other struggle against terrorists seen at any other point in the film.

 

Luke Bracey, who played Alexander, actually made for a decent antagonist in spite of the script he was working with; Bracey had this malicious way of attempting to manipulate others and one of the best scenes in the film was when you saw him start to lose control of his operation.

However, the best performance came from Chris Hemsworth, who played TV Salesman. It's a strange pick on my part to choose a cameo with a couple of minutes of screen time. In my defense, I wasn't really spoilt for choice given some of the performances from the main cast and the quality of the script. In fact watching Hemsworth's scenes was like watching little comedic bits from an entirely different feature. The role had quite an everyday, nonchalant charm to him. I really liked that he was so slouched and oblivious in the face of danger. While everyone else was fleeing for their lives we get Hemsworth's sales rep watching the emergency broadcast feed like it's engrossing reality TV. Hemsworth is a performer with a lot more experience and talent than his co-stars in this, so it doesn't take much for his natural humour to really shine.

Sometimes you hit those action movies that just doggedly do not care, they have no brainpower put into them and the characters are far from compelling. This film is almost immediately recognisable as one of those from the first few scenes. Our main protagonist is stony faced and tough as nails, with a quick one-liner handy whenever required. Interceptor is frustrating because it feels so out of date, a lot of the tone of the feature made me think of b-list 70s or 80s action films. There is a focus on minimal settings, easy stunts and a convoluted bad guy plot foiled by a hero who really goes through no semblance of character development. The antagonists for the film all have very conflicting motivations and perceptions of America, yet somehow they all work together well enough. Worse than this the main antagonist is the son of a billionaire who is condemning every concievable wrong America perpetrates while also working for money himself. The film tends to enjoy contradicting itself like this on a regular basis. Seeing our protagonist go through a number of motivating speeches that all practically state Americans just 'keep on fighting' no matter the problem wears thin, essentially the film's theme is that Americans can do anything if they persevere. It's not a message that rings true in the context of the film or the world watching this film. The camera work shows a confused hand at the director's chair; often there are sudden choices like slo-mo shots or dramatic zooms or the character suddenly in motion that feel clunky and poorly placed. The amount of times I had to watch the film peel back to very average crane and coptor shots was abysmal. The special effects used in the feature spoke to a poor budget, the missile scenes looked glaringly bad and really needed to be better detailed. Michael Lira's score for Interceptor is easily the worst thing about it, I often felt like I was watching the simplistic and punchy score of a direct to TV kids action movie rather than this Netflix original R-rated feature.

Elsa Pataky, who played Captain J.J. Collins, proves that she is incapable of leading a blockbuster feature in almost every scene of the film; Pataky delivers bland one-liners with such a monotonous manner that it is hard to get really caught up in the moment. Aaron Glenane, who played Beaver Baker, is probably the most generic portrayal of a redneck I've seen in film recently; watching Glenane labour on with his "I'm a patriot" tirades gets pretty repetitive. Mayen Mehta, who played Corporal Rahul Shah, really plays up his role's meek side; I often found Mehta to be the quietest member of the cast and he never made his presence strongly known in a scene. Belinda Jombwe, who played Ensign Washington, is a weirdly perky character which clashed with the morose military tone; Jombwe just doesn't seem to inhabit the military setting at all which makes her performance oddly jarring so early in the film. Marcus Johnson and Zoe Carides, who played General Dyson and President Wallace respectively, are very two-dimensional figures of authority in this; Carides in particular is a hard sell as a presidential figure. Colin Friels, who played Frank Collins, has no chemistry whatsoever with his on-screen daughter Pataky; I thought his line delivery was certainly as bad though. Rhys Muldoon, who played Lieutenant Colonel Clark Marshall, is oddly presented as a father.mentor figure to Pataky but the pair still seemed so detached from one another; Muldoon never commands with authority which undercut the nature of his character.

 

If you told me this was made forty to fifty years ago I'd probably believe you, it comes off as a very outdated style of action feature. I would give Interceptor a 1.5/10.