Some films don’t globetrot so much as globelurch, steered by creatives going wild on Expedia after a heavy night on the Kestrel. Pinging haphazardly and often nonsensically around central and eastern Europe, this trashy runaround sees French action specialist Camille Delamarre (Brick Mansions, The Transporter Refuelled) emerging from sometime mentor Luc Besson’s shadow, for better or worse. Liberated from Besson’s more questionable fetishes but also untethered from a healthy line of credit, the result never rises above generic multiplex filler. Everyone is travelling economy, with a tatty script stuffed way down, out of shame, in their carry-on luggage.
After doing for an assailant who attacks him and his schoolmarm girlfriend, nice-guy assassin Morgan (Henry Golding) learns he’s been unknowingly entered in effectively a hitpersons’ Champions League. On the plus side, it provides the perfect opportunity to deploy the improbably wide-ranging personal surveillance network he maintains from his shabby digs. Sam Neill is Morgan’s urbane handler, found tickling the harpsichord at one point; Noomi Rapace occupies a botched dual role, requiring her to alternate between big specs as the head of some security agency and blond frosting as the most vicious of Morgan’s rivals. The casting is simpler elsewhere: grizzled ex-doormen abound.
The action is functional enough, even as it abides by combat principles worn out by the later Bourne movies. The obvious limitation is that Delamarre remains baffled by any scene that doesn’t involve guns, cars or fisticuffs; his best guess is to screw in eight gaudy lightbulbs, go handheld and hope his actors can rescue him. They, however, are preoccupied with some of the most leaden dialogue ever transmitted in Dolby surround. No attention whatsoever has been paid to the detail: the fingers severed to confirm kills have all the solidity of Percy Pigs, while one website headline looks like it was knocked out on the Notes app 30 seconds before camera rolled. Appreciation for the artistry of the John Wick series redoubles frame by crummy frame.
• Assassin Club is released on 14 April in cinemas.
