Director: Simon West
Notable Cast: Dominic Cooper,
Gemma Chan, Austin Stowell, Tyler Hoechlin, Tom Felton, Thomas Kretschmann,
Olegar Fedoro, Derek Jacobi, Connie Nielsen, Jake Fairbrother
There’s a part of me that sincerely feels bad that Simon
West has essentially dropped into the straight-to-home-video realm. Sure, most
of his films are glorious B-movies anyway like Con Air and The Expendables 2
with a few questionable ones to add to the mix (*glares at my copy of the When a Stranger Calls remake on my
shelf*), but often enough he’s a much stronger director than people give him
credit for. His latest film, after the disappointing Gun Shy that just came out, is the espionage film Stratton, which is based on the popular
book series. Stratton is a shocking West
film though. Shocking enough, that I had to watch it twice to truly appreciate
what it was offering after I started it. For all of the great B-action movies
that West is known for, Stratton is
much more serious and grounded than expected. Reading the synopsis, it sounded
like a low-budget James Bond film, but in reality, it takes its Bond-like
concept and grounds it in a much more dramatic and subtle espionage thriller
akin to Jack Reacher. Yes, Stratton
is an effective merging of James Bond meets Jack Reacher. That’s not a sentence
I thought I would be typing, but in the end it’s true.