Movie Review – Security (2017)
Principal Cast : Antonio Banderas, Ben Kingsley, Liam McIntyre, Cung Le, Katherin Mary de la Rocha, Chad Lindberg, Jiro Wang, Gabriella Wright, Shari Watson.
Synopsis: A security guard protects an eleven year-old girl who is being targeted by a gang for participating as a witness in an important trial.
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Antonio Banderas looks for all the world like he’d rather be anywhere else than stuck inside this reductive, tedious Die Hard clone, ostensibly an action thriller but clumsily handled by director Alan DesRochers. I don’t blame him, really: Security’s dreary setting and low-budget premise must have been a chore to get through, what with inane plotting, boring characters and action sequences that stumble through effortful mechanics from a competent yet underserved stunt team. Banderas and co-star Ben Kingsley, once more playing the smooth-voiced villain with all the grimacing seductiveness he can muster, square off in a rain-soaked mall filled with the least offensive décor one might imagine, as a cohort of musclebound, gun-toting henchmen play havoc with the rest of the ensemble. Derivative B-movies don’t get much worse, really.
Banderas plays returned Marine Corps Captain Eddie Deacon, who is struggling to hold down work and maintain relationships with his family. He takes a low-pay job as a mall security guard, but is quickly placed in harms way by the arrival of a young girl, Jamie (Katherine Mary de la Rocha), who has fled from an ambush on US Marshals transporting her to a secure location. Jamie, it turns out, is a key witness in an upcoming organised crime trial, and is being hunted by a mercenary named Charlie (Kingsley) and his band of soldiers, all of whom will stop at nothing to see them all dead. Eddie, together with fellow mall guards Vance (Liam McIntyre – Spartacus), Johnny (Jiro Wang – Transformers: Age Of Extinction), Ruby (Gabriella Wright – The Transporter Refuelled), and the timid Mason (Chad Lindberg – The Fast & The Furious), must make a stand against the mercenary group to keep Jamie safe until communications are restored and the US Marshalls track their witness down.
It’s the old “right man, wrong place” kind of scenario, played out yet again in search of entertainment, and although Antonio Banderas has become a screen legend for his turns in a variety of action franchises – most notably the Expendables series in recent times – Security’s impotent direction and mild action sequences really don’t elevate him as an actor or A-list superstar. Try as he might, and I say this through gritted teeth, Banderas just isn’t capable of turning shit into gold in the same way a Statham does, or younger Schwarzenegger could back in the day, with sheer screen presence carrying even the most mild plot or set of characters beyond reasonable limits. Banderas’ gravelly voice and steely eyed glare, honed from decades of subgenre work this film could only aspire to emulate, are given short thrift by Alain DesRochers’ anaemic direction, as inert action beats play out with tired monotony and a decidedly sour tone overpower any real fun for the viewer here. The requisite sweaty, bloodstained climax is desperately under-delivered, and a lot of the film’s “why is this happening” backstory ill-explained or too shallow to really matter.
Okay, it’s easy to rag on a film with a low budget like Security, but other films have done far more with much less and remain classics. The one-location premise allows for a reduction in requirement for spending on locations, with a lot of the film’s exposition describes what’s going on or who everyone is rather than showing it (a crucial mistake, in my opinion), and what set there is really does look like they spent the entire budget dressing an abandoned shopping centre with the blandest, least conspicuous “American Mall aesthetic” they could get away with. A lot of the film transpires with the various characters crawling through darkened mall shops, trying to escape death and keep the incredibly idiotic Jamie from being captured by the goons, all while chattering away on walkie-talkies taken from the kid’s toys department – have these people ever seen how poorly those actually work? They’re terrible for any kind of stealth, making our heroes’ discovery (or lack thereof) a minor miracle – and Banderas doing his best grizzled old-man veteran take to try and bring some gravitas to proceedings. Kingsley, for his part, does as he does in this kind of role, chewing the scenery and spitting out lesser actors for daring to share the screen with him. He seems to be having a whale of a time collecting his paycheck, and is arguably the only real reason to watch this trash.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the egregiously awful performance of child actor Katherine Mary de la Rocha, as Jamie. As the film’s most important character to the plot, one might have expected a young actor of considerable talent to pull off a role involving terror, stoicism and ingenuity, but sadly they cast de la Rocha and the result is poor. The kid’s terrible at acting, despite being surrounded by talented thespians and Jiro Wang, and has that grating “look at me act” charisma so many of her age get from showbiz parents. You can kinda tell her acting career never took off, this being one of only two listed on her iMDB page, and if I’m honest I’m actually happy for her, because she doesn’t need the aggravation that comes with not being very good in a public forum like cinema. What’s a bit weird is that an actor with the same last name appears as her Uncle Will in the film’s final scene, so perhaps there’s some kind of background nepotism theme going on here I’m unaware of. Anyway, the character of Jamie is written terribly, like no 11 year old kid would ever act, and poor Katherine de la Rocha is forced to deliver risible dialogue with the perspicuity of a wart. Again, I feel bad for ripping into a young girl’s performance, and I’m imagining this film being her big breakout role, but for a character with such centrality to the plot and the emotional arc of our hero, having an actor who simply can’t manufacture the required performance front and center is an issue the director should have mitigated.
One thing classic action films have in their bag, however, is a gathering of memorable characters, no matter how briefly their screentime. In Security, none of the secondary characters really linger in the memory, although I will caveat that to say Liam McIntyre’s smart-mouthed Vance is perhaps the strongest actor who isn’t Banderas or Kingsley in this thing. McIntyre looks like a Wish version of Chris Evans and plays well as the unofficial “boss” of the nightshift security team, and to be honest his character arc was by far the strongest despite the relatively minor conviction the screenplay gives it. Jiro Wang and Gabriella Wright serve as bodies to be shot at, while Chad Lindberg’s cowardly Mason isn’t notable beyond “squeals and cries a lot, and then gets shot” so for what it’s worth he bitches out in The Fast & The Furious the same way so… you know, typecasting. Cung Lee plays Kingsley’s right hand henchman, with a showdown between he and Banderas one of the weakest underboss fights ever shot by a widescreen camera, making his involvement neutered in almost every way.
Security is an action thriller that’s as dull and predictable as it is tiresome. Poor dialogue, terrible characters and limited action sequences can do little to enthuse the viewer’s adrenaline experience, resulting in a mediocre movie of middling ambition and even less excusable execution. There’s a few, very few, moments that I whooped for joy, many more that I just rolled my eyes at, and more than a couple early on at which I was thoroughly tempted to switch it off and never revisit it. I’m glad I saw it, mainly for Banderas, but at no point can this miasma come recommended. Wants to be Cop Shop or The Wrath Of Man, ends up being a poor man’s Taking of Pelham 123. Avoid this one.
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