Movie Review: Soldiers of Fortune

Soldiers of Fortune

Globus-film, Crombie Film, Jeff Most Productions, Most / Rice Films, Most Films, Russia, USA, 2012.

American soldiers are searching for Taliban weapons cache in Afganistan. Capt. Craig McCenzie (Christian Slater) works as sniper when the mission goes bad. Capt. Mike Reed (Freddy Rodríguez) gets captured and CIA man Carter Mason (Colm Meaney) is reluctant to help him as it would blow his cover. Mason is about to make Mike transgender but Craig smacks him in the face. Craig and Mike then unflinchingly walk away with Taliban base exploding on background.

Craig McCenzie

Carter Mason

4 years later Craig and Mike are card sharks out of money. They meets strange people who arrange adventure trips to war zones. The idea is to send rich tourists with a mercenary guards to small Eastern European island to watch rebels fight a naughty dictator Colonel Lupo (Gennadi Vengerov). Cecelia (Oksana Korostyshevskaya) and Ernesto (Ryan Donowho) run the travel agency and the payments are used to sponsor the rebels. Surprise twist! Mason is alive and he is Lupo's right-hand man. Lupo has also a sadistic daughter Magda (Sarah Ann Schultz).

Colonel Lupo

Magda

Cecelia

Various millionaires attend the fun, including banker Charles Herbert Vanderbeer (Charlie Bewley), metal magnate Roman St. John (Sean Bean), telecom mogul Samuel Haussman (James Cromwell) and arms dealer Grimaud "Grim Reaper" Tourneur (Ving Rhames) and video game designer Tommy Sin (Dominic Monaghan), creator of popular "Death Porn" game.

Samuel Haussman

Grimaud "Grim Reaper" Tourneur

Tommy Sin

After lengthy training sequence the team is sent to action! The trip becomes more dangerous than it was intended and there is a traitor. War is hell and so on. Let's shoot the bad guys and go home. 

Roman St. John and Charles Herbert Vanderbeer

The beginning promises some 90s-style high-testosterone action, but the story disappoints with every cliché of an action movie. It becomes a poor man's "The Expendables" or "Tropic Thunder." Despite the good cast the characters are quite shallow. The strongest performances are by Rhames and Cromwell and also Meaney seems to have fun. The production looks okay for its budget with some nice sceneries in Ukraine. As a B-action film it is watchable, preferably with some beer although it not as good it could have been if the script had been stronger.

Globus-film has nothing to do with legendary Golan-Globus, it is a Russian production service company.

Rating: Average

Starring: Christian Slater, Sean Bean, Ving Rhames, Dominic Monaghan, Colm Meaney, Oksana Korostyshevskaya, Charlie Bewley, Ryan Donowho, Freddy Rodríguez, James Cromwell, Gennadi Vengerov, Sarah Ann Schultz, Shawn Parsons, Martina Jagodkina, Romuald Makarenko, Svetlana Tsvichenko, Marusja Korostyshevskaya, Ekaterina Suslova, Nikolay Sileverstov, Ali Voenmij, Edem Abdulaev, Asanov Ajder, Elena Lubimtceva, Valentina Shapovalenko, Anna Liboletov, Irina Ponomaryova, Jon Barton, Brett Lynch, Jeff Hamilton, Rydell Danzie, Jeff Prewett, Scott Peat, Shawn Balentine, Tim Abell, Stephen Ramos, Santiago Zapata, Martin Lopez, Scott Leva, Joey Naber, Elena Beuca, Dale Gibson

Director: Maxim Korostyshevsky