Despite knowing nothing about this movie going in, and having read my last Matthew Reilly novel about a decade ago, I was only minutes into this film when I thought "This feels like a Matthew Reilly story!". Unfortunately it never seems to hit the tension and the peaks that his novels did, and some of the reasons why are glaringly obvious. On the plus side, Pataky and Bracey do a fantastic job of holding your attention, and in fact holding the whole film together. They are helped along by a few cameos from Hemsworth, excellent visual quality and camera work, great audio and a decent score. You'd never mistake this for an Asylum release. But then the cons... all the secondary characters are badly written and acted, which makes the film feel underwritten and cheesy. In Reillys novels his secondary characters are much more compelling; Here they are just dumb and boring stereotypes. The "obvious traitor", the "mean lady", the "well meaning yet totally ineffectual mentor figure", etc and so on. They may has well have only bothered naming the 2 main characters, they're the only ones you'll remember. I enjoyed the movie regardless, but at then end I couldn't help wondering why they didn't make a movie using one of Reillys better stories, and whether it was a good choice letting Reilly himself direct this one. It felt like a missed opportunity. Credit where it's due though, Pataky and Bracey really made this work - otherwise it could have been a lot worse.

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