The vulnerable girl at the centre of Sir Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, Saoirse Ronan, is transformed into a teenaged martial arts expert in this supercharged thriller.
The improbabilities in the story rise as fast as the body count, as the action moves from the snowy wilderness of Finland to the deserts of Morocco and then to the urban jungle of Berlin. There’s also an interlude in Spain, where Ronan joins a family of hippies and makes a friend (Jessica Barden from Tamara Drewe).
It’s worth ignoring the story and just enjoying the settings and the non-stop action, which is splendidly mounted by highbrow director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice and Atonement). The twist is that secret agent Eric Bana has trained his daughter in self-defence, knowing she has been bred as part of a Cold War experiment.
The climax in east Berlin therefore provides a frisson of political intrigue as CIA boss Cate Blanchett and her German gunman Tom Hollander meet their inevitable fate.
Mature audiences (contains violence and offensive language); 111 minutes.
— by Nevil Gibson