Survivor (2015)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

just watch it!

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Run-of-the-mill. Unconvincing. OK for first half hour then premise becomes improbable. Couldn't finish.

Kate Abbott (Milla Jovovich) is a top security investigator who has been recently assigned to the US embassy in London. When she comes across a suspicious request, she delays a VISA. This delayed VISA means she must be eliminated. An assassin known as the Watchmaker (Pierce Brosnan) is being paid big bucks to do the task.The film was a big cat and mouse chase with everyone after Kate Abbott. While she makes the film as exciting as possible, she is no Jason Bourne. I would have liked to seen the roles reversed with Pierce as the good guy and Mila as the assassin dressed in black leather and spiked heels. It wouldn't be as real, but a bit more entertaining for us simple folk.The theme of the film is that law enforcement have been "doing their job" behind the scenes to prevent attacks, that we don't know anything about. Paid for by the Committee to Renew the Patriot Act.Guide 2-3 F-bombs. No sex or nudity.

SURVIVOR is a cookie-cutter modern-day thriller featuring non-actress Milla Jovovich in the lead role of a government worker who gets accused of crimes she didn't commit and who is subsequently forced to go on the run to clear her name. It's a story we've seen play out time and again in the likes of THE BOURNE IDENTITY and SALT, and indeed there's absolutely nothing new in the way of material here.Jovovich is one of my least favourite actresses, but at least she doesn't have time to emote here - she's too busy running around. The film's best element is Pierce Brosnan, cast against type as a cold-hearted assassin, and very good he is in the role too. Budget-wise, this is a middling story, with a number of CGI explosions and the like to keep it going, and some mildly suspenseful chase sequences which aren't too bad. It's not the type of film to set the world on fire, but if you're looking for something easy it might just do the job.

Stop. Stop the DVD. Stop the stream. Stop the torrent. There is nothing worth watching here other than a waste of acting talent. Instead watch The Shallows. I was lucky enough to have that DVD from the library as well, even though I did not know enough to turn off this crap until after I watched it. Now you know. Spare yourself.There must be a completely clueless elite that produces, writes, and directs atrocities like this. They have no connection to any human behaviors not involving limos and Dom Perignon. They watch other movies and see them succeed. So they make cargo-cult monstrosities like this, aping things like chases and explosion but without understanding. The characters don't behave in any believable way. The "technical" aspects like soldering a blob on a sim card to make a bomb are laugh-out-loud pathetic. Get any tech adviser from his mom's basement and he can come up with something more believable.Some specific objections. It takes an hour to learn what the opening scene in Afghanistan had to do with anything. An ambassador that can order extra-judicial killings in her host country. A high-level chosen-child striver security analysis that has to work the counter. You mind as well make her a heroic DMV clerk. Milla making noises when she is chased that alternate between Frank Zappa's "ice pick in the forehead" and the noises women tennis players make when they hit the ball. We all want to have sex with the nice Croatian girl, but she shouldn't make those noises when she is running for her life. Simple labored breathing would be fine, and probably a lot sexier. About five nondescript middle-aged white guys (NM-AWGs) that I could not tell apart even by the end of the movie. I don't know if the director has a crush on this facial type, but maybe he could cast a few redheads and beards and heaven-forbid, black and brown people. A few more gals might help too. Or just eliminate half the characters.The writer, director, and producer must be some Eloi-class elites that don't know anything about people or things. Maybe they just forgot, we all get old.A lot might have been saved in the editing bay. Open with the art gallery scene, but the owner friend is a guy. There are more straight people than lesbians, sorry, its simple demographics. Then some work boredom. Then the fantastic restaurant explosion. Lose the Afghanistan scene completely. We know there are sociopaths out there, don't remind us when we go to a movie. Also lose the whole McGuffin gas bomb thing. That means all the high-tech gibberish too. Terrorists are stupid savage people. They would use a fertilizer bomb in some unexpected vehicle to kill everybody. Maybe make it a CNN truck so if it blows up or not, its a win/win. Have her save the crowd from that.I was so delighted when a NM-AWG wondered where she would go after the bomb and another NM-AWG said "she will follow Embassy protocol." Gosh where they could have gone from there. Milla pulls out a bus locker key, perhaps from her sweet Croatian vagina. At the locker she gets $20,000, a gun, a passport, and a burner phone. She calls in and now all the good guys know she is on their side. The suspense is having her come in, without getting killed. She would have to have some special info, maybe the after-plastic-surgery appearance of the bad guy. But she gets foiled over and over. So she decides to fly to New York and stop the madman herself, despite just being a mild-mannered albeit sexy DMV clerk.The bones are all there, its just in the arrangement and details that this movie fails so miserably. There was one benefit in watching this dreadful mess. When I did plug in The Shallows, 20 minutes in I got a lump in my throat and jumped up and shouted, "Look everybody, a plot!"