3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Interceptor

2022, Matthew Reilly (debut) -- Netflix

"First-time director Matthew Reilly admits he never anticipated his feature film debut 'Interceptor' to do as well as it has since its release on Netflix earlier this month."

That's because, its just a cut above an Asylum movie. Reilly, more known for being an Australian writer of middling (my guess based on the plot descriptions of a few; but who are you to talk, considering you like the Reacher series) thriller fiction, helms his first feature film bank-rolled by Chris Hemsworth and starring Hemsworth's wife, Elsa Pataky. The movie answers the question of whether an Asylum movie could possibly be decent if it had a budget -- the answer is a resounding, "No."

Capt JJ Collins (Pataky, Thor: Love and Thunder) is sent back to work on Interceptor platform number-number-letter-number, one of two west coast military installations tasked with shooting down ICBMs that come from the west side of the world, i.e. Russia (or N Korea?) !! She has been sent back there, in disgrace, for bringing about the downfall of a general who grabbed her ass and then had the assault report buried, because.... well, because military men can. At the same  time she is arriving, the other interceptor base in Alaska is attacked by unknown forces, and destroyed.

Of course, the Bad Guys are already embedded inside the platform, begging you to wonder why a critical military base would have outside cleaning staff, instead of just getting the grunts to clean the toilets. No matter, Bad Guys kill everyone on board except for Collins and her immediate co-workers, who are holed  up inside the operations centre. The Bad Guys have to get in there, destroy the equipment, so they can fire a bunch of ICBMs at the US, killing lots and lots and lots of people, because America Sux.

So, this is your typical Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris action movie plot that would probably be accused of being woke, by its core demographic, because it begins with a woman reporting sexual assault. The cast is minimal, almost nil, really with just enough henchfolk for Collins to kill. The Head Bad Guy (Luke Bracey, Holidate) is a rich douche doing this, initially because he claims the US Sux and Has to End, but we learn its all for the money. That said, I am pretty sure destroying the US in a nuclear holocaust would destabilize much of the world's economy. But no matter, this movie is not strong on the logic. 

For example, the control centre is protected by two massive steel doors that the Bad Guys will take ages to cut through. BUT there are two hatches into the control centre, one below (which opens into... air, and sea below) and one on top. At any point anyone could have shot off the lock and crawled in. Also, the whole point of the Bad Guys taking the control centre was so they could pour sulphuric acid all over the control system, disabling it from launching any interceptor missiles. BUT apparently all you have to do is plug a gaming laptop into the right port and it will do all the work the control centre was doing. And don't ask me about the guy lying in a puddle of sulphuric acid like it was green coloured goo. Like many of these movies, they really don't care about continuity or logic or the intelligence of their audience.

So , yeah,THIS was the kind of movie that surprised everyone for reaching Number 1 in so many countries. And yeah, it surprised me as well.