BEFORE: Yeah, September can be a bit of a weird movie month, especially if I don't have enough "Back to school" films to really think of that as a theme, I think I only have two planned this year, and two isn't really a lot of anything. The last week has been a weird mix of fantasy and reality, stories about women soldiers and Plastic teen girls, murders in small town America and people sleeping around the art scene in London. OK, maybe I'm on a bit of Brit thing, between "Boogie Woogie" and "AbFab", plus Tolkien was British, so really all of the "Lord of the Rings" stuff sort of rings with a British accent. I think the films for the rest of the week will be more American.
Calum Gittins carries over from "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim". I've kind of fallen behind on finding new movies to add to my lists, I used to patrol the on-screen listing guide of my DVR religiously to find more material, now I only do it a couple of times a month. It used to be easier, the new remote control works a bit differently, but that's a lame excuse. I need to have more material to keep my linking options open, if I don't maintain 600 or so films to choose from, I fear the chain will come to an end at some point. However everything I add now can't be watched until next year at soonest, because the slots are filled for the remainder of 2025. Still, I have to re-stock the major categories, romance and horror and holiday films, everything else is random, more or less. Then at some point in December I'll try to put a romance chain together for next February and also figure out an appropriate starting point for Movie Year 18.
THE PLOT: Armed gunmen stormed the Iranian Embassy in London in April 1980, taking hostages. A tense six-day standoff ensued as the SAS, a highly trained military unit, prepared for an unprecedented raid to resolve the crisis.
AFTER: Well, yesterday's film was about a siege on Middle Earth, and this one is about a hostage crisis in the middle of London. I realize a siege and a hostage situation aren't exactly the same thing, but I think they're kind of in the same ballpark. Except one is a fantasy film and the other is based on a true story, and there's been quite a bit of both around here lately. I expect at some point it gets hard to tell the difference. JK.
I'm a little torn by this one, because it IS exciting, however in terms of action not that much happens for the first 3/4 of the film. There's the Arab men taking over the Iranian Embassy, a little bit of action there, but then it's a quiet stand-off once the hostage negotiators and translators start doing their work. The Brits call in the SAS, Special Air Service, to quietly take up residence in the building next door to the embassy, and they have orders to bust in should the terrorists start shooting people. But there were DAYS of negotiations before any action was taken against the hostages, five I think, so that means a lot of down time mid-movie while we all wait for something, anything, to happen. I know, I'm always the one complaining when some editor puts the scenes of a movie in the wrong chronological order, this film gets so boring in the middle I almost wished we could flash-forward to the more exciting bits at the end. Nope, they stuck with the correct timeline, and if people back then had to wait for the exciting bits, so do we.
There are training exercises, though - the SAS builds a life-size model of the Embassy in a training camp, and the team members practice their movements through the model, as practice for when they break into the real building. At that point they would be expected to try and separate the terrorists from the hostages, in order to kill one and save the other. A lot of the strategy here was apparently the recommendation of Margaret Thatcher, at that time the newly-elected Prime Minister of the U.K., and she clearly wanted to send a message to other terrorists, that "we no longer negotiate with terrorists", largely because if you give them what they want, they're only going to want more. They're kind of like children, I suppose, you give children dinner and a bath and send them to bed, and then they want you to read them a story, or kiss their ouchies or take care of them when they're sick. Jeez, when does THAT all end? Thank God I don't have any of those, they would really cramp my style and eat into my personal time.
Oh, right, terrorists. These Arab terrorists demand a lot, they want people released from prisons in Iran and also they want a statement read on the BBC about the reason for their actions, to protest the Iranian government's oppression. Well, jeez, what are the Brits supposed to do about that? It's not like the Ayatollah takes advice from the British government over how to run their country or who to release from jail...
Chief Inspector Max Vernon of the Metropolitan Police got the lucky job of speaking to Salim, one of the terrorists, by phone and then trying to fulfill (or at least pretending to fulfill) their demands, which came to include a bus ride to Heathrow Airport accompanied by ambassadoes from the Arab League. Oh, well, I don't know if we can do that, I mean, sure, we CALLED the Arab League, but everybody there was busy or something, but don't worry, we left a voicemail and I'm sure someone will get back to us very soon. Right. The terrorists also released one hostage whenever they got food or something else they wanted, but this crisis might have gone on for weeks if someone hadn't panicked and shot a hostage on Day 6, this was kind of the signal for the SAS to invade the building.
Well, if it makes you feel better, I don't think they were ever really going to bring you that bus. Finally the assault is given the green light, and Max Vernon calls one more time to keep Salim occupied while the SAS forces approach the building from all sides and all angles. Finally, something exciting happens in the movie! No spoilers here but it's about 35 trained commando soldiers against 6 amateur terrorists, and the soldiers did their research and some practice runs first, so that should give you a pretty big clue regarding who comes out on top here.
With the exception of Mark Strong and Jamie Bell, somebody seemed to have a preference for less well-known actors, perhaps so they wouldn't distract people from the story. This technique was also used by that film "United 93", hardly any notable actors in that one. Like, I'm now a professional actor-spotter, but beyond Abbie Cornish and Tim Pigott-Smith, I didn't see anyone I recognized.
Directed by Toa Fraser
Also starring Jamie Bell (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Mark Strong (last seen in "Tár"), Abbie Cornish (last seen in "Stop-Loss"), Martin Shaw (last seen in "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad"), Tim Pigott-Smith (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Ben Turner (last seen in "300: Rise of an Empire"), Emun Elliott (last seen in "The King's Man"), Aymen Hamdouchi (last seen in "Unlocked"), Andrew Grainger (last seen in "The Meg"), Colin Garlick, Colin Moy, Toby Leach, Martin Hancock (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Xavier Horan, Te Kohe Tuhaka (last seen in "Love and Monsters"), Robert Portal (last seen in "Welcome to the Punch"), Ronan Vibert (last seen in "The Snowman"), John Henshaw (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Tim Downie (last seen in "War Machine"), Sam Snedden, Mia Blake, Matthew Sunderland (last seen in "Pearl"), Emma Campbell-Jones, Jared Turner (last seen in "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans"), Ryan O'Kane, Fayssal Bazzi (last heard in "Peter Rabbit"), Kenneth Collard (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Nicholas Boulton, Michael Denkha, Scarlett Featherstone, Venice Harris, Marjan Gorgani, Kip Chapman, Ajay Vasisht, Scott Michael Wagstaff, Sara Stone, Ghazaleh Gol, Glen Levy, John Ramm (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), with archive footage of Margaret Thatcher
RATING: 6. out of 10 smoke grenades (looks like somebody ignored Thatcher's request)
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