Known as S.M.A.R.T Chase in the Chinese market, The Shanghai Job is a British-Chinese co-produced thriller that sees Orlando Bloom shirk off the shackles of popular franchises – see Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of The Rings – in order to reshape himself as bonafide action hero.

Bloom stars as grizzled security agent, Danny Stratton, who has been living at the bottom of a bottle in Shanghai since his last job, a year ago, saw him lose a valuable painting to a gang of professional thieves. For reasons unknown, Danny and his team are given one last chance to redeem their reputation by escorting a valuable artefact from one destination to another. Wouldn’t you Adam and Eve though? The same gang turn up to relieve him of said item, leaving Danny to work quickly to save what’s left of his expiring reputation.

Largely known for his TV work, director Charles Martin (Skins, Being Human) has put together a solid if somewhat silly action piece that sees Bloom charging around barking at people like Jason Statham whilst sporting the bleached hair of a Buffy-era James Marsters. He’s joined in his sprint across the city by a team of fellow security agents, including Full Contact’s Simon Yam. Riffing off the relationships within the Fast and Furious franchise, each member brings their one personality trait to the table that manages to both compliment and aggravate the others in the group. A quick shout out to the dubious Ding Dong (Leo Wu) who spends a large part of the film following a girl using his drone; his cutesy puppy eyes failing to cover the slightly creepy invasion of privacy.

Moving on… Whilst The Shanghai Job is nowhere near to being of the same quality as later instalments of the aforementioned franchise, it does give an indication of the direction the series could be taken should the higher ups wish to pursue it. The acting is definitely a mixed bag, but Bloom seems to be relishing the opportunity to do his own stunts and get his teeth into something a bit grittier.

Perhaps The Shanghai Job’s biggest issue is pacing and an over-reliance on the cliched. Seemingly realising that the S.M.A.R.T. team are running out of breath, screenwriter Kevin Bernhardt (John Rambo) throws in a damsel in distress into the third act which also sees a literal game of catch added to the mix. Presumably because everyone got tired of punching each other.

Derivative of a number of recent actioners, including John Wick, The Shanghai Job is certain to find its niche with a select few. And if all involved are willing to return and embrace the hyper-realistic absurdity of it all, there’s potential for more fun ahead in future installments.

Following a bank job, Macdonald (Matthew Modine) and his fellow bank robbers do a back-woods rendezvous with shady partners in order to split the cash. The only wrinkle is that Macdonald and his fellow thieves already divvied the cash up and buried what they adamantly believe is their share of the $20 million spoils. The shady partners are none too pleased and a shoot-out ensues, seeing Macdonald’s accomplices all violently dispatched and Macdonald himself legging it through dense woods. During this tense escape, Macdonald cops a bullet to the head and thus a permanent bout of amnesia.

Fast forward seven years and Macdonald is a shell of his former-self and something of a man adrift. He’s banged up in maximum security for a crime he doesn’t remember committing, receiving regular visits from Sykes (Sylvester Stallone), a cop who worked his case and lives in hope of him remembering his crimes. One day, a fellow prisoner poised-for-release named Lucas (Ryan Guzman) offers Macdonald a chance to escape, aided by seemingly compromised prison officer Farren (Tyler Jon Olson) and prison Nurse Erin (Meadow Williams). Macdonald is smuggled out of the facility, to a deserted location where he’s offered a chance to remember his fragmented past with the help of an experimental new drug that restores memories but also causes intense pain. Submitting to the drug, Macdonald is as hopeful at the prospect of restoring his memories, as his abetters are about locating the stolen money from the bank job he cannot remember. On the trail of the escapee is the world-weary Sykes, who’s partnered with the tetchy Franks (Christopher MacDonald), and the pair endlessly bicker while overseeing the manhunt.

Mike Maples’ screenplay is pedestrian, lacking plausibility or weight. There are some serious logic holes which are helped in no small part by the fairly capable cast, particularly Modine who’s rather excellent as a man without a past. The low-budget nature of the production means that most scenes (save the prison sequences) take place in abandoned forests, desolate roads, vacant houses and empty factories, which leaves the viewer with a weird sense of emptiness and makes the film seem stagey. There are twists (obviously Macdonald is something of an unreliable protagonist) which help keep the plot moving along at a decent speed and Thomas Calderón’s editing coupled with Australian Peter A. Holland’s camera work give the action sequences some much needed pep.

The nature of Stallone’s supporting role means that he probably spent only a few days on the set, but he does alright with the modicum of character that the script presents him with. Stallone wears the part like an old shoe, busting out his ‘crusty old cop’ arsenal of character traits and gravelly-voiced grump, carving out a pretty solid performance on the whole.

Overall, it’s a straight-up VOD B-movie and knows what it needs to do to get the job done.

There’s a stinky pall of cruel fate hovering over this retooling of 1989’s based-on-a-true-story TV movie, Billionaire Boys Club (which served as a starring vehicle for “Brat Packer” Judd Nelson). The story is a classic one: ‘80s excess and coke-fuelled youthful promise corrupted by greed and the sweaty-palmed clutch for cash.

Joe Hunt (Ansel Elgort) lives with his father, Ryan (Judd Nelson), and spends his days on the make, struggling to sell his stock market skills and coax over-cashed, feckless trust-fund brats into investing the money that their parents worked so very hard for. Enter Dean Karny (Taron Edgerton), an old school buddy whose ambition-fuelled trajectory intersects with Joe’s, and the two form an unholy alliance, as they spruik their “paradox philosophy”, a masturbatory exercise in business ethics and moral equivalency, conveniently negating morality and ethics that might serve to hinder money-making opportunities.

Such lunk-headed wisdom soon converts brothers, Scott Biltmore (Ryan Rottman) and Kyle Biltmore (Jeremy Irvine), who sign on board the fledgling BBC, an investment company which allegedly took its enigmatic acronym from “The Bombay Bicycle Club”, though once all the crooked and shady events had unspooled, it was dubbed by the media, “Billionaire Boys Club.”

BBC’s partners soon meet Ron Levin (Kevin Spacey in Swimming with Sharks mode), and it’s with Levin’s promise of mountains of investment cash that the young men’s dreams of mammon begin to take shape, and pretty soon it’s cavernous marble and glass apartments, coke lines on glass coffee tables, and pastel polo shirts with popped collars.

Though all is not what it seems, and the hustlers soon become the hustled, which eventually spirals into murderous deeds, orchestrating kidnappings, fraudulent Ponzi schemes and wrestling to the death with crazed, opium-addicted Iranians.

Look, this isn’t a bad film; in fact, it’s a fairly enjoyable cautionary yarn. Taron Egerton is slightly miscast as the conniving “Mean Dean” but he shoulders the part; Elgort offers much the same problem as he did in the catastrophically overrated Baby Driver: he’s a charisma vacuum and presents something of an issue in a story that requires audience connection with the plight of the lead character. Spacey is pretty good as the dodgy Ron Levin, hamming things up and sleazing his way through scenes.

Director James Cox (who previously directed Val Kilmer as porn icon John Holmes in Wonderland) really just copped an unlucky roll of the dice, in that this was the final performance of Kevin Spacey, before his career was immolated by the revelations of his predilection for aggressive sexual harassment. As a result, the film was shelved, and then after the dust settled on Spacey’s behaviour, and kicked into a measly theatrical release in order to honour contractual obligations. The resulting box office gross of $618 had to have been a kick in the teeth for the filmmakers; for Spacey, it’s something of a death knell for his cinematic career.

Overall, the treatment is too tepid to rub shoulders with The Wolf Of Wall Street and too derivative (despite being a true story) to set itself apart from other “impressionable guys getting in over their heads” movies (Oliver Stone’s return to the Wall Street well Money Never Sleeps and Todd Phillips’ War Dogs spring to mind). Okay movie, wrong actor, wrong time.

No stranger to the small screen, Natalie Dormer (Game of Throne, The Tudors) co-writes this gritty crime thriller alongside Director Anthony Byrne (Ripper Street, Peaky Blinders). The first half of the film plays like a “Hitchcockian” thriller, accompanied by a nice suspenseful film score by Niall Byrne.

Set in London’s busy streets, the film follows strong female protagonist Sofia, a blind pianist who finds herself entangled in a world of murder and crime when she hears her upstairs neighbour Veronique (Emily Ratajkowski) fall to her death. Soon discovering that Veronique’s father Radic is a ruthless criminal accused of horrific Serbian war crimes, Sofia is embroiled in a cat-and-mouse game between a dishevelled detective and the criminal underground festering with Radic’s henchmen.

Throughout the first half of the film, Sofia’s motives are at times questionable and she is not initially who she seems, as her own path of revenge is revealed. Mysterious thug Marc (Ed Skrein) seems to play Sofia’s knight-in-shining-armour, which at times feels unnecessary simply because of the fact that Dormer kicks-ass as a one-woman wrecking machine. But the connection both characters have developed makes for a nice twisted romantic part to the story.

The storyline is at times generic, yet it does have redeeming qualities. Anthony Byrne constructs a very simple, yet effective scene where a fight breaks out, but all you can see are fighting shadows on a wall; plus, tight pacing, slick sound design, plus Dormer’s strong blind person, who outshines all the other characters in the film.

The film provides a few too many twists and turns, which makes for a convoluted narrative and an unconvincing ending, however, you can also easily look past this to appreciate it for the impressively directed, clever thriller that it is. All-in-all a nice addition to the small screen.