Stratton (DVD) – Movie Review
Action movies may be the most milked dry genre when it comes to generic movies with the same, albeit slightly divergent, plot, the same acting methods, the same lead character and above all, the same action sequences that define the movie. Stratton seemed to be a somewhat promising title at first, but a few minutes into the movie it proved to be another cliché movie with the same typical elements to be found in all, cheaply made, action flicks. While fans of generic movies in the genre will have some pleasure wading through this one, we’ll discuss why most should avoid the following title.
The movie starts off with a team of the SBS (Special Boat Service) infiltrating a facility in Iran that is possibly hiding a biochemical weapon. The two agents in charge of the actual infiltration are John Stratton (Dominic Cooper) and Marty (Tyler Hoechlin), who successfully make it inside the facility but they discover all the scientists dead, and the weapon missing. Before they know it, they are being ambushed and chased, forcing the rest of the team to pick them up within the Iranian borders, breaching their airspace, which will eventually lead to an international conflict. Nonetheless, during the escape Marty gets wounded and of course doesn’t make it out alive, forging the ideal plot to take down the villain with a personal vendetta being added to the mix.
They soon discover that the weapon is more than likely in the hands of a presumed dead Russian spy by the name of Grigory Barovsky (Thomas Kretschmann), who is clearly planning to use the weapon for his own evil deeds. The team will have to race against time in order to find the weapon or at least the target of the possible attack, to try and prevent a tragedy from occurring.
The flow of the movie is pretty much as expected, where the action sequences alternate with the somewhat technical and informative sections to know what the hell is going on. You’ll pretty much know who is going to die, and when, who is being typecasted as the villain, who is going to become the hostage, and so on. You can easily predict the construction of the movie, when something big is going to happen, the reflection moment, the sad moment and the grand extremely predictable finish. While action enthusiasts may like this trustworthy formula, for most casual viewers this will become nothing but a snorefest.
Not completely unexpected, the acting performances are on par with the somewhat bland and boring plot, and seeing the movie is pretty much all with guns in hand, there are no real special strains on the actor to perform something special physically. We are quite sad to see Tom Felton star in this movie as we feel he could have done a lot better, the same can be said about Gemma Chan who also feels like a boring side-character, instead of having a decent role.
As is typical with DVD releases of movies such as this one, there are no special features to be found. That being said, there isn’t really a need to dive deeper into the world and content of Stratton, as nothing noteworthy has been used to create this movie, safe for a few actors that have been seen in bigger movies. Even the stunts were so low budget and low key that they actually felt so fake there wasn’t a need for a making of sequence of the action scenes of the movie. All things considered, it was probably a logical decision not to include any extra snippets that revolve around the movie, be it the plot, the making of or the acting performances.
Conclusion
Stratton is a bland mess that brings nothing new to the genre, which may be a fun experience to those who love the very stereotypical action flick. Other than that, the acting performances, the action scenes and even the special effects were nothing to write home about, making the overall movie a rather boring addition to the genre, with a minimum effort. This is one of those movies that is okay to watch on a boring evening in the background, when doing chores, playing a game, or just as background noise if you’re feeling lonely. Fans of the generic action movie could still pick this one up when it has landed in the sales bin, which will undoubtedly be rather quick.
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