8. Renegades; movie review

RENEGADES
Cert 12A
103 mins
BBFC advice: Contains moderate violence, sex, language

This year, my everyfilm template has introduced two new elements - the re-introduction of the director's statement and the big question.
I thought the latter would be fun because it occurred to me that every movie leaves at least one question hanging in the air.
In the case of Renegades it was where is the director's statement?
After failing to find a quote from Steven Quale, I trawled the internet for comment from anyone connected to the movie but failed to find one.
This would seem to suggest that even co-writer Luc Besson and director Quale are distancing themselves from the project.
One can only imagine what an actor of JK Simmons is making of it all. He surely expected the project to work out better when he signed up.
At first I thought that Renegades was excusable because it appeared its makers did not have money for their Expendables/Kelly's Heroes/A-Team take-off.
But then I read, on Internet Movie Database, that its budget was 67 million Euros.
How on earth do the studios expect to recoup that outlay?
In the UK, Renegades is only being shown at the tiny Reel chain and has gone simultaneously to VoD.
It is not hard to see why.
To be fair, the movie has a relatively interesting premise with five US Navy seals being persuaded to go in pursuit of 300 gold bars, looted by the Nazis and lost when resistance fighters blew up a dam.
The story is set in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s civil war and the Seals are acting as NATO peacekeepers.
It stars Charlie Bewley as one who has fallen for the local waitress (Sylvia Hoeks) whose grandfather just happened to be the only one who knew of the gold.
Thus, he is persuaded to go in search of it.
In the hands of a good writer this may have worked but Besson and Richard Wenk's dialogue is at best clumsy and at worst infantile and the action scenes are surprisingly tepid.
Worse still the characters are stereotypes.
For example, the Seals leader (Sullivan Stapleton) is respected but moody because of an unsaid tragedy at home, Simmons is the archetypal growling sergeant major with a good heart and the bad guys... well, who cares about them.
And then there is the weakest most cliched ending since Hannibal Smith liked it "when a plan came together."
Renegades had been touted as a major movie but just how and why it seeped away to this will remain a mystery as long as none of its makers are talking.


Reasons to watch: Reasonably exciting storyline premise
Reasons to avoid: Clumsy execution including banal dialogue

Laughs: none
Jumps: none
Vomit: none
Nudity: none
Overall rating: 4.5/10

The big question: why is there no director's statement?

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