The idea is outlandishly stupid, but has potential for a fun fish out of water film.
Thomas Jane plays a caricature of a texas ranger straight out of a western movie. He comes across an international terrorist robbing banks in Texas for some stupid reason and is then recruited by "British Intelligence" as they call it in the film to track and identify him in london.
The terrorist plans to set off some nuclear device or something stupid like that, aided by some Russian gangsters, Islamic terrorists and an assortment of other stereotypes.
What sounds like the setup to a fun Beverly Hills Cop style fish out of water action comedy ends up being a bore, with most of the jokes falling flat, Thomas Jane and his British female partner having zero chemistry, and the villains turning into a joke as the movie goes on.
John Malkovich is in it for an easy payday as a British Agent, doing his best impression of the old microsoft windows text to speech robot voice, whilenot even hiding his American accent.
The opening scene is pretty good with Thomas Jane tracking down a drunk Indian horse thief for some petty crimes and being a hardass about it.
From there on it's just downhill.
Thomas Jane has zero character development throughout the movie. He never grows. They do nothing with the fish out of water scenario. No character development for his female partner as well. They remain static cardboard cutouts. The whole cultural aspect is never really played with, probably for fear of offending people with stereotypes.
Structurally, the film is an absolute mess. The entire London plot goes nowhere and the finale takes place in the Texas desert again, just where the story started. This renders the entire London part, the center of the movie, superfluous. You don't send your hero on a globe trotting adventure only to end up where he started.
There is a fight with Thomas Jane and an oversized muscular Russian gangster again. Three of them actually. They utilize all kinds of household items and kitchenware again. This could have been a great callback to the fight scene in Punisher. However, they lack humor here. The violence and amount of damage each character takes is equally ridiculous here, but lacking the opera music and likeable side characters from Punisher, it just comes off as uninspired here.
Also, if you're going to have 3 fights against the same villain, there should be some character development. Maybe the villain could have gained some respect for Jane's character over their encounters. He had no real reason to follow the main villain. He was a mercenary.
So much wasted potential.
Also, how cheap do you have to be to use digital blood instead of squibs? Oftentimes the bullet wounds look like low resolution overlays. They aren't even always tracked right, which tells me they had some underpaid kid there adding them in on after effects. Thomas Jane coproduced this. How can you produce your own star vehicle like this, and then mess something as simple as squibs in an action film?
Very disappointing.
All that being said, I generally enjoy seeing Thomas Jane on screen. He lost his leading man flair, but he's still good. A shame he joined the dollar bin direct to video crew like Liam Neeson, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson and others. This film wasted a good idea with a bad screenwriter and poor direction, though given the budget, I don't want to place too much blame on the director. Still, he put his name on it and not Alan Smithee. Should have had more pride in his work.
