It’s at this point that Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer’s script delivers the film’s one decent idea, that niftily reframes and story but almost goes so far as to explain why it has been so poor up to this point. But the film never really capitatlises on the clever conceit, falling back on action, techno-talk and a throbbing bombastic score courtesy of Steve Jablonsky.Save for a Point Break-y foot and bike chase, the action has learned nothing from John Wick or__ Chad Staheski’s 87 Eleven aesthetic (ie. letting action take place in long takes). Instead a punch up in a toilet, a showdown in a tunnel riddled with flour after a truck crash (it allows Diesel to walk moodily out of the dust), cinema’s only action sequence set in East Sussex and a fight atop a lift all feel like by-the-numbers set-pieces, full of slo-mo injections and senseless cutting. After being shot in the face, Garrison’s visage rebuilding itself is an impressive effect but little else lodges itself in the memory.
The film gets a spec of character colour from two techies played by Siddarth Dhananjay and Lamorne Morris but for the most part it’s a bland ensemble following Diesel’s lead. There’s something potentially 123Movies in Garrison’s plight — a man who’s lost his past and can’t face his future: think Peter Weller in Robocop — but Diesel gets nowhere near it. It’s a somnolent, inexpressive performance (even by Diesel’s standards) that makes Stallone’s turn in Escape Plan 3 feel like Daniel Day-Lewis.