A comedic-dramatic action film produced by Luc Besson has been released in Russian theaters. He also co-wrote the screenplay. What 'Weekend Agent' is all about—in our review.

According to the plot of the film 'Weekend Agent', a Korean oligarch named Kwon (Sung Kang) finds himself at the center of a major corruption scandal. Environmental activists (one of whom is his adopted son) around the world file complaints against him for poaching and environmental pollution, while in the US, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is digging into him for smuggling heroin disguised as seafood and canned goods. John (Luke Evans), a special agent, has been dreaming of putting Kwon behind bars for over fifteen years.

And now he finally gets a chance—an anonymous letter with compromising evidence on the 'owner of factories, newspapers, and steamships' arrives at his mailing address. He goes AWOL, defying his superiors' orders, and arrives in Taipei to obtain irrefutable proof of Kwon's crimes. 15 years ago, he had already come to Taiwan on the same mission, but it was unsuccessful.

If everything described above seemed interesting or at least intriguing to you, then, alas, I hasten to disappoint you: 'Weekend Agent' is only slightly about the fight between special agents and the drug mafia. Much more attention is paid to the storyline of the main character's family. Kwon's wife (Lunmei Kwai) turns out to be the same girl the hero fell in love with during his previous mission in Taipei, and the villain's stepson named Raymond (Wyatt Yang) is his biological son. And this is not much of a spoiler: viewers learn this in the first third of the runtime.

From the very beginning, the script starts to fall apart at the seams. For John, it is somehow a big revelation that his ex-wife married his main enemy. And it's unclear who to blame—those who wrote this nonsense or the competence of Luke Evans' character, who, as a special agent digging into Kwon for a decade and a half, couldn't find out about this circumstance. And this despite the fact that Joey leads anything but a reclusive life in Taipei.

And there are an indecent number of such script inconsistencies and blunders in the film. For example, Kwon catches Raymond stealing his notebook and interrogates him under duress. The latter has the wit to give a false lead to another hotel room instead of the one where the DEA commandos are staying, after the notebook was delivered to them. However, nothing prevented him from naming any other hotel at that moment, thereby protecting the special agents. True, in that case, viewers would have been deprived of an action scene.

Much could be forgiven if such plot nonsense were compensated by dashing fight scenes and chases. And on one hand, the kitchen melee at the beginning of the film or the hotel episode are not poorly made—bloody, dynamic, and a bit cynical. The fight choreography, while not reaching the John Wick franchise, still pleases with creativity and complexity of staging.

However, as the finale approaches, the action increasingly loses realism and inventiveness, turning more and more into a typical 'Hong Kong action film', and a B-movie at that, because the local 'gun-fu' doesn't even come close to the elegant 'bullet ballet' found in the films of John Woo. The true apex of these trends is the main character's jump through the side window of a car speeding at full throttle. This is no longer even the Hong Kong school—it's pure Bollywood!

As for the national flavor, things are also not great in 'Weekend Agent'. Although the gloomy opening credits set to a Chinese remix of Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones suggest the opposite. In reality, replace Taipei with any other Asian metropolis, be it Tokyo, Shanghai, or Seoul, nothing in the film would change drastically.

After watching the film by George Huang, one is left with only one question: did Luc Besson himself actually actively participate in this, as stated in promotional materials, or did he just allocate money for production without really reading the script? And the second option sounds much more plausible. However, oddly enough, calling 'Weekend Agent' catastrophically bad also doesn't work. It is more of an unnecessary and unremarkable filler rather than a failure. To be fair, it can even amuse: some with not-so-sophisticated but funny quips from the characters, others with the unintentional absurdity of what's happening on screen.

Trailer:

'Weekend Agent' from October 3 in all cinemas.