Rating: B-
Dir: Drew Thomas
Star: Kaiwi Lyman, Amarsaikhan Baljinnya, Sanjar Madi, Tsetsegee Byamba
Sometimes, all you need is a fresh coat of paint. And, really, that’s most of what this has to offer. The plot and characters here are largely generic action tropes, albeit executed well enough. But relocating things to Mongolia? I’ve not seen that before. It’s a simple enough twist, though I wonder how it came up. Was this a local product, bringing in an American writer and director? Or an American company, perhaps flinging a dart blindfold at a world map, in search of some new, exotic location for its movie? [I’m reminded of HK film Guns & Roses, filmed in the glamourous destination of… Birmingham] Might be a little of Column A, a little of Column B.
The story is familiar ground, as noted. Troubled Detective™ Wade Dalton (Lyman) is investigating human trafficking in Texas, when he collars a member of the Mongolian syndicate, Serick Ibrayev (Madi). For reasons best described as hand-wavey, he has to go back to Mongolia with the suspect and make sure he testifies. To this end, he is teamed up with local Maverick Cop™ Ganzorig (Baljinnyam). But Serick’s gang have no intention of letting their member take the witness stand. There’s also a mole feeding them information from inside the Mongolian police. So Wade and Ganzorig have to go off-grid along with their prisoner, if they’re to make it to the court date alive. Yeah: nothing here you haven’t seen before – on English-speaking soil at least
But the execution is solid, and that’s the most important thing. Anchoring things is Lyman, whose detective feels like he came through a time portal from the seventies. The very first line in the movie is, “Nice car, Lieutenant Starsky,” forcing Wade to point out that Starsky drove a Torino. He’s a fun character to be with, and fits in relatively well to the cultural backwater of Mongolia. There’s a running joke about cars having the steering wheel on the wrong side: TIL Mongolia drives on the left, like Britain. Serick and Ganzorig are good too, handling dialogue in both languages without missing a beat, though the best actor is likely Serick’s moll, Khulan (Byamba), who is more effective than most native English speaking actresses.
It all builds to a well-staged series of battles on a train, as our heroes try to get Serick to court before the deadline for his testimony. It ends in Serick facing a former colleague in a knife fight (top). Though I ain’t gonna lie: I’m pretty sure this was not shot on a train, unlike the rest of the sequence. While I’m laying out the criticisms, I’d have liked to have seen more Mongolian culture, playing up the “fish out of water” angle. A yurt or two and bad karaoke are about the extent of it, and feels like a missed opportunity. Overall though, this remains fun to watch, and if the resources overall were clearly short of unlimited, the end product was surprisingly entertaining.
This is part of our World in Action feature, covering action movies around the globe.