A fun, well-staged enough Jason Statham sexy machismo action fest that suffers greatly from an ending that, from any kind of thematic standpoint, makes almost no sense. It feels as though it exists almost completely as a fuck you to the idea of genre formula endings. Which is fine in a way, but when you've spent the rest of your work fully embracing the audience-placating aspects of your formula it feels a bit like you're just pulling the rug out at the end for the simple sake of doing it. "Gotcha!" isn't inherently worthwhile as a statement, especially when it means sacrificing whatever narrative and thematic cohesion that has been previously built.
Though narratively the movie isn't all that streamlined or confident, either. Individual setpieces work, but the movie feels like it's just about to introduce some big twist and instead ends. The twist is there's five minutes of movie left. Like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, it's a movie that is almost all set-up. But unlike that film, the finale goes so smoothly and according to plan that there's never any dramatic weight, which is part of how it confuses things and seems to suggest there's more to come.
Statham is as perfect as he's consistently been: understated, suave but with a rough-hewn chisel, able to look far more fantastic in expensive clothing than most anyone ever will, and Ben Foster's erratic over-acting is a nicely defined contrast. A rather perfect bit of stunt-casting that deserves a director more willing to explore the contours of their chemistry, to let the movie breathe so that the ending can move with the weight it wants to suggest.
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