When his supervisors at the CIA refuse to take action after his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack, a decoder takes matters into his own hands.

Reviews

I didn’t even realize this was a remake until after I had seen it, the original a 1981 also-ran that wasn’t exactly crying out for a new generation of viewers. Rami Malek is Heller, a CIA nerd that goes into the field to track the terrorists who killed his wife (an underused, and quickly “fridged” Rachel Brosnahan). He seeks training from spy king Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), but finds much better use applying his smarts to find and kill the bad guys one by one.

Malek is perfectly cast, his spastic, angsty, mildly on the spectrum agent is an engaging watch. There’s enough action in the set pieces to keep things moving at a decent clip, and the final confrontation plays out interestingly, albeit typically. It’s a decent watch, probably better as a Saturday night home viewing than needing any big screen appearance.

Jonathan’s grade – C+