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There is absolutely nothing new in this whole film. It is as if the writer sat down with 20 or 30 old action movies and took a little bit from each. You might expect that this would make for a very poor film that is disjoint and lacking depth but the writer has done a great job. The fact that there is nothing new makes this film easy to watch and great for just kicking back and wasting a couple of hours to. It’s a bit like putting in a comfy old jumper with a cup of hot chocolate.

The story centers around a heist gone wrong. In the one bit of inovation in movie money has to be transferred from one plane to another which, of course, goes wrong and leads to a crash. The gung-ho mountain rescue go up to save what they suspect are lost walkers only to end up having to help the bad guys get the money back.

The love angle is not over stated as it is in so many action movies. I fail to see why so many directors and writers think action movies need “something for the ladies” (sorry to any ladies reading I mean it soley as a turn of phrase). In fact the only bit of totally pointless emotion nonsense that does it’s best to wreck an otherwise good action adventure is at the start when Walker (Stallone) drops Tuckers girlfriend off a cliff. The scene itself is well shot but it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the story. It is, I suppose, an acceptable reason for Walker to quit climbing but I struggle to undersand why Tucker is so angry with him and believes Walker did the wrong thing. As far as I can see there was no other option. She was a gonner if Walker didn’t do something and his additional weight on the line didn’t in anyway assist in the girl falling as the buckle had already snapped. Basically it was just used as an excuse to introduce some unneeded tension between the two main characters.

The photography is amazing. Plenty of wide angle shots of wilderness with helicopters wizzing around in it. This is a film that really wants a big screen though. The sound is good and really gets you in the mood. Dialog flows easier between the characters and there are only a few moments that are horribly clichéd.

Of course in my book any movie with Stallone in it gets an automatic +10%. I am always amazed by Stallone. He comes across as a bit dim but when he gets in front of a camera he is the most natural actor I think I have ever seen. There is something about him that draws me in and makes me want to believe it is real.

Something that I have noticed about films with Stallone is that the showing-off-the-muscles scenes always look like he is actually really straining. I suspect that the other muscle bound actors such as Arnie and van Dame fake it where as Stallone actually lifts an not insubstantial weight. My evidence for this is the fact that in a number muscle scenes the hand expected to be holding the weight is off camera. You can also clearly see in the Rocky movies when he is training. I would be interested to know if this is true.

The bad guys really help make this film. It’s a shame so many of them are British but I suppose this was one of the first British Bad Guy movies so it can be excused. I wonder what it is that makes the Americans think we make good bad guys. At least we are good at something though eh? It is refreshing to see the bad guys kill people that aren’t any use, though. In so many films the bad guys are soft and set themselves up for a fall. Here they really seem to make a good go of being professional bad guys. Where as most films have bland bad guys that you think aren’t all that bad here we have some bad guys that you really want to have die.