Rent SAS: Red Notice (2021)

Fast-paced thriller - SAS: Red Notice review by Alphaville

Far-fetched, silly, gung-ho SAS romp, full of shoot-em-ups and earthy squaddie banter. It’s a cinematic, American-style thriller with the added bonus of some suitably full-on English swearing instead of bland American euphemisms such as sonovabitch.

The action mostly revolves around the hijacking of a train in the Channel Tunnel, where the scenery and fights do become a tad repetitive, but the book-ending start and end action sequences up the exotic quotient. Director Magnus Martens keeps things moving along at a slick pace and stars Sam Heughan and Ruby Rose are easy on the eye. Instantly forgettable but go with the flow and it’s good old-fashioned entertainment.

SAS : Red Notice - SAS: Red Notice review by IanF

A strangely unsatisfying thriller, not sure where it went wrong. The body count and level of destruction was high, perhaps I didn't warm sufficiently to the leads? Perhaps it was too implausible? A gas pipeline down the middle of the Channel Tunnel, would really be a disaster waiting to happen, and would never have been allowed. That is probably the key implausibility.

A fun action-thriller that brings a handful of unexpected elements - SAS: Red Notice review by BG

'SAS: Red Notice' is a quirky beast.

The film opens with Tom Wilkinson's character 'William Lewis' explaining that psychopaths who can show love are a rare breed, like black swans - which also happens to be the name of his family business; a Private Military Company of callous mercenaries who live up to the psychopath label as they proceed to 'clear' an uncooperative town in order to help a pipeline go through, at the behest of Andy Serkis' shadowy British military character.

Soon afterwards we meet the film's lead, SAS soldier 'Tom Buckingham' played by Sam Heughan. Buckingham is an odd character for an Andy McNab creation; unlike his usual scrappy underdogs, Buckingham comes from a very rich family, and his palatial country pile features photos of relatives posing with dead leopards, just to further emphasise the gulf between his past and the usually more likeable values of thriller leads. Which seems to be the point; because Tom isn't quite like other people. In a casual comment after an exciting and enjoyably tense raid, even his best mate Declan (a charismatic Tom Hopper) laughs off the idea that Tom could ever actually love someone. McNab is very tangibly playing with the notion of 'good psychopaths' - something that he claims he himself was diagnosed as - basically, people who possess a singular drive and focus that makes them highly dangerous to bad guys in their way, but hampers their ability to react with the necessary tact in relationships. The film highlights several moments of Tom's emotionally impervious or tactless behaviour that even his colleagues shake their heads at, without necessarily judging him - and it does add an interesting new dimension to the thriller. Especially when the UK government decides to clamp down on the activities of the Black Swans, and Lewis' son and daughter escape to freedom, attacking the Channel Tunnel just as Tom and his girlfriend are trying to get to Paris for some much needed R&R...

Ruby Rose is extremely good as lead villain 'Grace', her icy stare helping to imbue the character with an edge that is further enhanced by her charm, and having a ball as an unrepentant bad girl whose malice is debatably quite literally in her genes in the form of inherited psychotic illness. Grace is the favoured successor, and isn't above manipulating her much maligned brother (Owain Yeoman) to achieve her aims as they seize a train and try to win their escape (and riches) at gunpoint.

Andy Serkis is terrific as the cynical hard-bitten military liaison, hugely charismatic and utterly convincing in every scene he's in, while Hannah John-Kamen does interesting work at turning the typical 'girlfriend' character into something a bit more textured as Tom's love interest.

Sam Heughan does a remarkably good job as well, as the square-jawed hero whose methods and behaviour are significantly more questionable than usual. His big expressive eyes and earnest performance are just right at winning you over, amidst frequent suggestions that he may be 'wired' a little too differently to be capable of truly caring.

The story isn't entirely unpredictable, and there are silly moments and mis-steps; - the opening looks a little lower budget than the rest, and John-Kamen's character adopts a gleefully laid back approach to carnage that seems at-odds with her profession, but Red Notice succeeds fast and often in the action stakes. It's filled with regular gunfights, several dramatic explosions, frequent life or death stakes, and characters that are endearing enough to root for, or gleefully villainous enough to be intrigued by.

The film gives good bang for its buck, feeling like a high-stakes hostage thriller and including some inventive ideas that I haven't seen on screen before, and it's a high-energy action film that has a hefty amount of British actors in a UK setting for a nice change - a pretty rare breed in itself.

Well worth a look.