High-Octane
Summary
The Bricklayer delivers what I want from an action picture with regular fight scenes, shoot-outs and explosions. The characters aren’t especially interesting and the story is your generic spy comes out of retirement tale but I still had fun with it.
Plot: When a rogue insurgent blackmails the CIA by assassinating foreign journalists and framing the government, the agency must lure their most brilliant yet rebellious operative out of retirement to unravel the international conspiracy.
Review: The year of the blue-collar action hero begins with Aaron Eckhart playing an ex-CIA operative known as ‘The Bricklayer’ with Jason Statham playing ‘The Beekeeper’ coming later this week. I’m looking forward to seeing The Toilet Attendant and The Joiner later this year.
Reviews thus far have been unkind for The Bricklayer calling it generic and boring, but I personally thought it was pretty awesome. Directed by Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger) the story isn’t that exciting or original, but it was serviceable and there was plenty of action with some brutal beatdowns, shoot-outs and explosions.
As I’ve said before, I feel like Aaron Eckhart deserves more credit as an actor and he’s well cast in this as the likeable but seemingly invincible Bricklayer, Vail. In this movie he is shot, thrown off buildings and is essentially John Wick as he just brushes it off and moves on. He has to team up with rookie Kate (Nina Dobrev) who is by the book and doesn’t really add much to proceedings.
Clifton Collins Jr. plays the villain Radek who has a past history with Vail; throughout the film we’re asking if Vail can actually be trusted which keeps you guessing… at least for a little while.
The action is what stands out here with some great fight scenes and it looks like Eckhart did a lot of them himself; it’s for the most part well-paced but you could maybe have trimmed a few minutes to make it tighter. It’s also predictable who the mole is which is obvious early on to everyone except people in the movie.
Overall, The Bricklayer may not be anything new and it’s generic “guy comes out of retirement” stuff but I will watch anything with Aaron Eckhart in it and there is no shortage of action here making this far better than some reviews have stated. Judge for yourself as the film is out now on Prime.
