Film review: The Expatriate (15)

 

Anthony Quinn
Thursday 28 March 2013 20:00 GMT
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Philipp Stölzl made an excellent mountaineering picture in North Face but has fallen head first off the cliff with this feeble and perfunctory action thriller.

The Expatriate joins a file of movies – Taken (Liam Neeson), Stolen (Nicolas Cage) – in which an ageing ex-CIA operative has to go after the goons who've kidnapped his teenaged daughter.

Here, it's Aaron Eckhart being chased around Antwerp and Brussels by a sinister corporation which has been eliminating its employees: an arms deal, a cover-up, the usual. Liana Liberato plays the daughter, and does pretty well considering the absurd hoops she must jump through once dad has revealed himself as a Bourne-again assassin.

Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) offers too little, too late as the CIA's Euro-expert charged with tracking Eckhart down. Arash Amel wrote the script, but there's nothing about its set-ups and reveals that a computer couldn't have handled just as ably.

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