‘Alarum’ Review
Stars: Scott Eastwood, Willa Fitzgerald, Mike Colter, D.W. Moffett, Sylvester Stallone | Written by Alexander Vesha | Directed by Michael Polish
Alarum is the Old English word from whence the word alarm came from. It’s also the title of Sylvester Stallone’s latest film, an espionage thriller whose players include an organization comprised of rogue agents called, you guessed it, Alarum.
Prague, 2019, Joe Travers (Scott Eastwood; Dangerous, Pacific Rim: Uprising) comes under fire in his hotel room. He takes out the shooter, only to be jumped by Laura (Willa Fitzgerald; The Fall of the House of Usher, Scream: The TV Series). The two fall through a window onto a parked car, where they decide hooking up with each other is better than beating each other up.
Five years later, they’re in Gdańsk, where their plans are interrupted by a plane crash, a crash caused by somebody shooting the pilot and his passenger. Coming across the wreckage whilst Laura is busy elsewhere, Joe figures out what is going on, guts the body of one of the occupants and retrieves a flash drive.
Unfortunately, he can’t get away before Orlin (Mike Colter; Evil, Murder City) and his men show up. Even worse, he’s given his position away to his old boss Burbridge (D.W. Moffett; Pacific Heights, Crime Story) who is very curious about where he’s been for the past five years. With an eye to getting some answers, he calls in Chester (Sylvester Stallone; Eye See You, Over the Top), an agent who has some history with Joe.
Director Michael Polish (Terror on the Prairie, Force of Nature) and writer Alexander Vesha (Deadly Impact, Alert: Missing Persons Unit) aren’t trying to reinvent the genre with Alarum. Instead, they concentrate on delivering a familiar tale of crosses, double-crosses and the search for an all-important MacGuffin with as much entertainment value as possible. And, given what they have to work with, they actually do a pretty good job of it.
For a mid-budget film, Alarum contains a surprising amount of action with plenty of shootouts, chases and brawls. There’s more action in this film’s first act than there was in all of Stallone’s last film, Armor, although much of it doesn’t involve him. Eastwood and Fitzgerald are the film’s leads and they, or their stunt doubles, carry most of the action, which includes a couple of nicely choreographed one-on-many fights between Laura and Orlin’s men.
As Chester, Stallone spends much of his time sitting in hotel rooms, talking to Burbridge and doing a bad job of convincing Joe he’s there to help him. I’d be surprised if he was on set for more than one or two days.
Unfortunately, while Alarum delivers on the mayhem, the script has a few issues. At least one plot line that seems to be important is simply dropped and forgotten about, and several other details are left unexplained. Most notably, the film’s two major organizations, the National Clandestine Service and Alarum itself, are mysteries.
One seems to be a government assassination squad and the other a bunch of non-governmental operatives whose aims are as nebulous as the NCS’ place in the hierarchy of intelligence agencies. Or how Joe and Laura went from trying to kill each other to lovers mid-fight.
That’s offset to a certain degree by the acting, which, while nothing special, is decent, and Eastwood has improved as an actor since I last saw him. As an added bonus, the techno-sounding score by Yagmur Kaplan (The Lodge, Cash Out) is a change from the generic blues so many of these films use.
If you don’t mind a few rough spots and keep your expectations in check, Alarum should provide ninety minutes of mindless fun.
***½ 3.5/5
Lionsgate will release Alarum in US theatres as well as to digital and VOD platforms tomorrow, January 17th.
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