L'ultima partita

As a Briton, after seeing the trailer for this, I thought it'd be brilliant to see a bunch of football fans blown up. So I watched it the day it was released. I'm also a Drax fan, played by Dave Bautista, who also headlines this movie as a humble-but-hard ex-Army soldier visiting the UK to see his niece and sister-in-law. His brother died in action. The movie is reminiscent of Die Hard, and also Sudden Impact, of course, which it was clearly inspired by (to his credit, and no surprise, Dave Bautista is as enjoyable a lead as prime-era JCVD). I liked his sidekick, a wimpy Brixton-born Arab, who at the beginning of the film an old woman assumes is a terrorist (there is a great 2-in-a-row pay-off to this scene near the end of the film). In the last 10 mins, the story has a few implausible beats (mostly after the end result of the terrorist's actions), I think the screenwriters had written the main action of the film, and resorted to 'the numbers' in wrapping up, but I liked it, it was better than you'd expect. There is a bike chase sequence where I would've chosen subtly different shots, but the Director is quite good overall. Also, for Brits, look out for the Irish-accented supporting role by a star of the British "Shameless"! For Americans, for Brits, for soccer fans world-wide, watch this film. It's pretty great overall, given it's modest budget of $20 million - they got a lot for their money. May Dave Bautista do more British productions...