The Numbers Station (2013)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Having read a lot of lukewarm reviews I was relieved to find myself falling for this modestly produced work set in the kind of lonely British military base my Dad spent much of his NSA career in. Operators in US signals intelligence, like the heroine here, also a civilian technician, have to function without a clue about the wider global implications of their job. It's certainly worth a story or two. True as critics point out there's not a lot of story here or even much real danger, or body count. However the bleak dimly-lit scenes and Cusack's deadpan persona leave you thinking the worst might well happen just for the hell of it! Without giving anything away the film is pretty pessimistic from start to finish really. For me it is the contemporary Noir elements, the style and the brooding moodiness that give this film merit and individuality. It is actually more realistic than sexier spy thrillers -- real espionage is brutally dull and crushingly amoral so much of the time. The Numbers Station reminded me of Retford playing the man on the spot in the bookishness-meets-CIA-treachery in Three Days of the Condor, only this time mostly in the dark....just remember - don't trust trust anyone.

This B-movie thriller has the unusual setting of Suffolk as a basis for the typical Hollywood-style action. The action is centred in and around the titular building, which is owned by the CIA and used for broadcasts. The problem is that some traitorous bad guys want to access the system to broadcast their own messages, which is where a weary John Cusack steps in.Cusack plays a burnt-out operative who has been reassigned to an easy duty but finds it anything but. His pretty young associate is played by Malin Akerman, of WATCHMEN fame. The two of them are involved in a cat and mouse game that takes place mainly in dark corridors and the like; the problem is that it's obviously a cheaply-made film and boy, does it look it. There are a few brief faces in support - namely Lucy Griffiths (ROBIN HOOD), Hannah Murray (GAME OF THRONES), Richard Brake (BATMAN BEGINS), and a welcome Liam Cunningham - but mostly this is oddly generic stuff, and not very enthralling.

It's no master piece, but it is way better than it's current score (atm 5.6). This is a classic action movie somewhere in the middle of an unholy "bond", "die hard" and "taken" trinity.Malin Åkerman makes an impressive acting performance in every way, incluing an extremely convincing "being knocked out"-scene. She kills her role in every way possible and this role should never be held agains her in any way. The story is much deeper than first portrayed and makes you feel for the protagonist, even before there is a dilemma portrayed. Once the dilemma is in place, the story goes on in a well paced manor but without any big surprises.To keep it short, this movie is really enjoyable but you might be able to guess the outcome even after 10 minutes of runtime.8/10

Danish director Kasper Barfoed doesn't do much to make "The Numbers Game" memorable in his English-language film debut. This formulaic secret agent thriller stars a world-weary John Cusack as a CIA field agent who finds himself relegated to the position of a watch-dog for Malin Akerman after he fails to pull the trigger on an innocent bystander during a botched hit. Aside from its happy ending, little remains to distinguish this murky as well as murderous espionage epic. The characters emerge as one-dimensional ciphers that make only a minimal impression. The opening scenes in New Jersey have our morally conflicted hero gunning down three men in a bar and then pursuing a fourth to his residence where he polishes him off only to be confronted by the dead man's daughter. CIA operative Emerson Kent (John Cusack) doesn't see any reason to raise the body count, but his brusque superior, Grey (Liam Cunningham of "Titanic"), shares no such sentiments and insists that the girl must go. Ah, well, we all knew that "Grosse Point Blank's" John Cusack had drawn a moral line in the sand that he cannot cross. Grey demotes him to watching a code operator, Katherine (Malin Anderson of "Catch .44") at a remote number's station in Suffolk, England. You can tell that this is a low-budget thriller because no more than a handful of people populate any scene and the two primary locales are far off the beaten path. Otter Guðnason's widescreen cinematography, Ged Clarke's production design, and Liz Griffiths' set direction make solid contributions, Barfoed doesn't generate any momentum. The best thing you can say about this analog melodrama is that it doesn't wear out its welcome as he wraps up everything in under 90 minutes. Freshman scenarist F. Scott Frazier gives none of the principals any quotable dialogue, and the complicated plot about untraceable radio broadcasts in the field and an attack on the isolated installation won't have you mesmerizing your friends with its double-crosses and revelations. Since the Richard Burton spy thriller "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1965), we have known that the espionage business provides more grief than rewards. You'll have to be a schmuck like me, who keeps buying Cusack's direct-to-video thrillers like "The Factory" and "The Number's Station," to waste your time on this fodder. The conceit that intelligence agencies rely on analog transmissions of encoded information from outlying areas to their field operatives doesn't make this indie thriller, with eighteen executive producers, irresistible. John Cusack replaced Ethan Hawke, and he gives a serviceable performance, but this humorless, humdrum thriller looks like a paycheck potboiler. Neither Cusack nor Akerman take any time out to either grope or fondle each other. Little in the way of fireworks occurs. Liam Cunningham makes a strong villain but Barfoed denies us the closure of a showdown between Cunningham and Cusack. The siege section of "The Number's Game" yields little in the way of either suspense or excitement, but the supporting cast never reflects these shortcomings. There is a small amount of violence, but nothing that will make you flinch.