STAR RATING: ***** The Works **** Just Misses the Mark *** That Little Bit In Between ** Lagging Behind * The Pits <br /><br />Wow. I've had such a bombardment recently from all my favourite action heroes. They've all been okay at best, Godawful at worst, but now it's this late entry from Wesley Snipes co-starring Tamzin Outhwaite, unknown to many but known to me and no doubt many other British viewers from hit TV soap East Enders.<br /><br />Jack Tulliver (Snipes) is a disillusioned former special ops (just like in his previous film Unstoppable!) commander who's switched to armoured car heists to get by in life. Him and his team have just pulled off the most daring robbery of their careers, when some masked mobsters rudely muscle in on his operation and try to make him hand over a briefcase, which, unbeknownst to him, contains a priceless Van Gogh painting that may be a fake. The police intervene and he is forced to make off. His girlfriend is kidnapped and he is forced to bring a pushy military officer (Outhwaite) along for the ride. He drops her off, thinking that'll be the last he sees of her. But,as events roll on, her, the Romanian authorities and a gang of typically Russian mobsters, headed by a sickly, gaunt figure (they're Equal Opportunities Employers these Russian mobsters, you know) who's proud to have got where he is despite his condition and wants everyone to know it, will come together to make his life really difficult.<br /><br />Wesley's actually on pretty good form here, firing off wise-cracks and strutting around with his definingly cool-cat persona that was so lacking in his last effort, the dour Unstoppable. Outhwaite provides sturdy support, but she is the amateur in this action adventure game and Snipes is the pro, and their chemistry never lets them forget it. She gets better as the film goes on, but she's still got a bit of a way to go if she wants to latch on to the Hollywood way of doing things. From the minute I first read that she'd appear alongside Wesley Snipes in a new action movie, I knew it'd go straight to video (the Blade franchise is the only thing keeping Snipes in theatres) and I feel kind of sorry for her if she was expecting things to go any bigger, but this could be the start of bigger things and I wish her well for the future. Speaking of up-and-coming British talent, Tamer Hassan has another role as a mob heavy (doesn't this bloke ever worry about being type-cast?) He says practically nothing at all through-out the entire film and he serves no other purpose than to look dark and menacing, as do the other cardboard cut-out heavies. The main Russian villain is fairly eccentric, but ultimately just boils down to your typical such baddie for this type of fare, spurting out an annoying number of sentences that begin with 'in my country, we have a saying...' <br /><br />But none of the cast can do much about a frenetic, convulted plot that leaves too little time to really care about any of the characters and also raises some serious plausibility errors through-out. But it's fairly slick and polished, Snipes is on good form and there's one or two nice action sequences, so it might just float your boat. **