Here we have a numbingly empty feature that exhibits a blend of Die Hard and John Wick with the most exhausting banality. Yes, the production values are fine and the performances are competent, but there’s not a shred of wit or passion. Reno, I suspect, had an extension to pay for when he agreed to this.
Our focaliser is Ali (Ruby Rose), a paramilitary guard who’s traumatised by a job that goes fatally awry. Upon returningto New York, a friend finds her work as a doorman in a fancy apartment building. He doesn’t mention that her estranged brother Jon (Rupert Evans), a British professor, lives there with his two children. Just as Ali begins to rekindle, Victor Dubois (Jean Reno) storms the building with a gang of thugs, demanding to know where his paintings are.
Reno is an enjoyable French baddie for about five minutes or so, echoing the cultured menace of Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber. However, this shtick becomes risible as he talks art and wine with Jon, an earnest pseud who meets Reno’s Gallic pretention with a very British pomposity.
Meanwhile, Ali sneaks through corridors that are given no sense of place or geography. It is in these drab locales that she kicks, punches and stabs, using speed and agility to make up for her slender frame. Of course, it’s a standard display of excessive choreography, with all the obligatory cartwheels and flying kicks that immobilise groups of armed men within 10 seconds. A boss fight happens, which involves a bit more punching and kicking until the inevitable conclusion. It’s a masterclass of cliché and convention.
