Why has Australian bestseller Matthew Reilly taken so long to bring his brand of action to the screen? Publishing since 1996, starting with standalone novels like intergalactic tournament thriller Contest and progressing to the super-Marine Shane Schofield series, Reilly’s books have a distinct style: ‘90s blockbusters transmuted into paper and ink with all of that era’s cheesy dialogue, unflappable heroes and spared-no-expense action sequences intact, italics wielded with abandon to heighten what would be money shots onscreen. Interceptor is Matthew Reilly’s directorial debut, and it is unmistakably a Matthew Reilly adventure; a seasoned reader will know exactly what scenes would be italicized on the page.
Harkening back to the glory days of ‘90s DTV action, Interceptor is a 90-odd-minutes riff on Under Siege, almost entirely confined to a single room but embracing that limit as a claustrophobic strength. The premise is exceedingly, confidently simple to match its confined setting: a Russian-backed traitor plot has stolen 16 nuclear warheads, there are two stations that can fire intercepting missiles–and one has already been destroyed by the opening credits. But the remaining base has a secret weapon: one very badass Elsa Pataky.
Likely best known for her role as Elena in the Fast & Furious franchise, Interceptor demonstrates how that series failed to tap her strengths. Here, as the besieged Captain Collins, Pataky delivers the kind of intensity which practically defined the DTV action stars who thrived in the home-video pre-Netflix days—actors like Mark Dacascos and Gary Daniels and Cynthia Rothrock. Director Matthew Reilly wastes no time capitalizing on that presence, jolting the film into guns-blazing siege thrills by the 12-minute mark and unleashing Pataky in a fierce hallway brawl capped by a fist-pumping highlight of a kill.
With Pataky defending the locked-down station control center alongside Mayen Mehta’s combat-untested corporal, Interceptor settles into a rhythm of bloody attacks as ex-operative Kessel (Luke Bracey) and his traitors attempt to breach the room. It’s here that Interceptor becomes a film of two distinct halves: the one with punchy well-choreographed brawls, and the one with clunky heavy-handed attempts at dramatic backstory and timely themes.
With Extraction’s Sam Hargrave as action consultant and veteran stunt performers both in front of and behind the camera, Interceptor stages several intense bouts of scrappy fights and close-quarters gunplay that turns the control room into a varied arena. Despite some awkward editing and flat shots, the ferocious energetic physicality always shines through as Pataky and her opponents thrash each other. A fun set-up and pay-off—a notable trophy, a refrigerator– and surprisingly brutal deaths that recall the mean streak of ‘90s action keep the fights unique in spite of the single-location setting.
Between the brawls, shootouts and race-against-time plot, Interceptor is undoubtedly a Matthew Reilly-novel-as-a-film, for better or worse. Stiff quippy dialogue attempts to marry siege thrills with themes of sexual assault and harassment in the military. It’s an admirable effort that Pataky dramatically sells, but the uneven handling of Interceptor’s action drama comes across as pace-halting at best, leaden and underdeveloped at worst.
Interceptor will undoubtedly be a your-mileage-may-vary kind of film, but genre diehards with fond memories of discovering unknown action talent in back-of-the-shelf VHS gems will find a movie that confidently knows what it is and commits to those strengths with passion. Perhaps one can forgive budget CGI and clunky clichéd dialogue in a movie where Elsa Pataky stabs a man in the eye with a gun.
Photo courtesy of Netflix
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