Renegades (2018)

I love this movie so much

What a waste of my time!!!

A different way of telling a story

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

I came here to write that I guess we have to endure a fresh writer with a great idea getting "blocked" until proven and I got Wenk and Besson instead ... No explanation whatsoever from my part. This is a pretty original? and smart idea getting flushed down the toilet with mediocre at best fillings between the plot points. In my eyes, they took a story that had potential to be a blockbuster and transformed it with serious effort into a complete joke. There are countless examples of this listed by several other reviewers and I have absolutely no intention of wasting any time to repeat them, since I'm dangerously close to applying more effort into this movie than the creators.

Nazi gold salvage action film with a trace of tongue-in-cheek humour. Navy SEALs on enforced leave try to salvage $300m of gold at the bottom of a Bosnian lake. The story is far-fetched, with plenty of macho idiocy, hammy lines, jerkily directed and overblown action sequences rushed to their conclusion. Its jingoism even stretches to a baseless scene of British soldier bashing against the backdrop of the Bosnia War. The idea that a bunch of military personnel would go-for-broke, avail themselves of military equipment so easily, risk court martial let alone risk their own deaths to rescue a fortune, and all for the benefit of a local village girl, is plain ludicrous. All in all, it has a direction reminiscent of a TV movie and but for the regular distraction of Serbian warlords doing evil, and some good underwater film capture, it fails to capture the viewer's imagination.

When a team of Navy SEALS learn that there are millions of dollars worth of gold which was stolen by the Nazis from the French and has been submerged in a lake for 50 years, they decide to help a woman who tells them of this secret in a bid to help her use the value of the gold to rescue her war torn country...It became clear to me at a very early stage that Renegades was not a film to be taken seriously and I suspect many of those that have rated it negatively have not realised this and have not been able to accept this film for what it is; it's basically a goofy heist film which merely uses war as a backdrop to frame the story. Right from the off this film is fun; lots of inane, but often amusing exchanges between the SEALS, endless rounds being fired (with the good guys always hitting and the bad guys always missing). Sure a lot of what you see here is nonsense, but for the most part it is entertaining nonsense.In many ways, it's a good job that I did find many aspects of the film to be enjoyable because the film does have its fair share of weaknesses. Although there is a sub-plot involving our SEALS being pursued by a group of angry Serbians it always feels rather inconsequential to the main 'heist' plot and this aspect of the story lacks any real tension - in fact truth be told I could have done without it all together for all the purpose that it served.The acting lets the film down ever so slightly as well; Sullivan Stapleton is basically playing the same character he played in Strike Back (but again this could be seen as being fun if viewed in the right context). None of the other SEALS really make much of an impression and it's basically left to the ever reliable J.K Simmons to show everyone else how it's done (which he does with ease and once again gives a 'show stealing' performance).I can understand some of the criticism levied on this film; it isn't as intense or exciting as a lot of war films and heist films - although I did like the way this film tried to combine the two genres. The acting for the most part isn't great (with the odd exception to the rule). However, I did get the impression that the film has a certain self-awareness about it and that the filmmakers kind of know it isn't great, but made it fun in a trashy disposable kind of way. Yes it's flawed, but I kind of liked it anyway.

Great story, but the execution is just bad. You know what's going to happen, it's predictable. Give this a pass.