Mercenaries (2014) Survival Lesson

Survival Lesson: If your knife is a rubber prop, don't let your opponent see it bend.

Synopsis: A series of unbelievably dumb events.

Rating: 0/10. A movie's opening scene usually is a good indicator of what the viewer is in for. That is definitely true in this case, whose opening scene shows the President's daughter in a convoy get stopped by a guy with a cart in the road and then ambushed. With most of her protection detail dead, one of the last remaining men tells her to run for it, and he will cover her. There are so many dumb things in this scene alone that I will have to bring out bullet points.

• It is highly unlikely that the President's daughter is going to be driving through a warlord-controlled area of Kazakhstan at all.
• If she was, she would be far better protected, the route would be cleared, etc.
• A convoy like that is not going to be stopped by a guy with a cart in the road.
• The convoy wouldn't stop. Even if the road was blocked, they would stay moving.
• A protection agent isn't going to tell the protectee to run for it.

This sort of inane stupidity is constant throughout the entire film, and unfortunately, there isn't any ridiculousness (like the Expendables) to make it ignorable.

So next, the agent in charge decides to put together a rescue team comprised entirely of women (because the warlord who kidnapped the President's daughter (Ulrika, played by Brigitte Neilson) has a severe mistrust of men (yet every single person under her command is a man)), and apparently, even with all of the resources available to America, they don't have anyone qualified except for four women who are currently in prison, one of whom is a former CIA agent who betrayed the agency and killed one of their own. Not only is it absurdly stupid that they don't have anyone qualified for such a mission, but there just is no way in the world they would put together a team of prisoners, especially one with such a fatal flaw (who of course ends up betraying the team - I mean who would have seen that coming).

Now that they have the team together, they complete their dumbest mission operation in the history of the world by sending them on their way with no preparation or support in a transport van which looks like it is about to die, driven by a random local smuggler. The smuggler is supposed to get them through checkpoints, but of course, that doesn't work, and the first checkpoint they run into turns into a gun battle that destroys their van, so now they have to walk.

One would think that being in a remote area of a country with an extremely low population density that they might have to walk a long distance, which would be problematic, but they show up in a town without any time seeming to have passed and showing no signs of exertion, so evidently, that wasn't the case. Being that they are obviously American mercenaries, wandering through the middle of town should be a bad idea. In this case, it is perfectly fine since there isn't another human being anywhere in sight except for a teenage girl who comes up to them and wants to join the team. They tell her to piss off, and as she runs off, she manages to steal the sat-phone from the one lady's belt, as if that would happen. This leads to a pointless scene of playing hide and seek with her. Eventually, they catch up to her, and she divulges a juicy piece of information that can get them into the warlords base: a truck convoy that regularly passes through town to the warlords base. Conveniently the truck always takes the same route at the same time, and wouldn't you know just happens to be right at that moment.

So they hijack the truck, open up the back, and what do they find? A couple of missiles. What are those one lady asks, and the explosives expert replies that they are ICBMs. Then they ask what are ICBMs. Are you frickin' serious? All these women who are either CIA or in the military don't know what an ICBM is? That would be like a sportswriter asking what the NFL is. It's stupid, stupid, stupid. She proceeds to give a definition that is word for word from Wikipedia: "...with a minimum range of 5,500 kilometers primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery."

Obviously, these aren't ICBMs. Anyone with even moderate knowledge would know that, and even if you didn't, anyone with moderate intelligence would know that missiles of that size aren't going to fly halfway around the world. ICBMs are enormous. They are launched from silos or submarines, or in some cases huge, specialized trucks. The two images to the right show a scene from the movie (top) of the alleged ICBMs, and a photo of an actual ICBM (bottom): a Russian RS-24.

Now that the team has the truck, they arrange a meeting with Ulrika, and to sweeten the deal pretend that the Asian member of the team is the daughter of the third richest person in China, which is proven by checking a Wikipedia entry that the team edited.

Now, if you are Ulrika and a team of Americans show up with your stolen truck and a valuable kidnap victim the day after kidnapping the President's daughter, what do you do? You shoot them obviously, but no, not happening in this stupidfest of a movie. Instead she takes them back to her base and despite flat-out saying she doesn't trust the team leader, she allows the other team members to walk freely around the base. Come on man...

One more scene as final evidence of the dumbness: They bring the President's daughter food and include a knife on the tray. Which is bad enough, but it's not even a knife you would eat with; it is a giant chopping knife. To no surprise, she picks up the knife and manages to get behind Ulrika and push it against her throat. Unfortunately, the knife in reality is a rubber prop knife, and you can see the thing bending (see banner at top of page).

I wouldn't normally lean into a movie like this, but this is beyond bad and into insulting. It isn't just the dumbness but also the laziness. To plagiarize definitions from Wikipedia, to be too lazy to actually research what an ICBM is, to film a movie allegedly in Kazakhstan which Kazakhs predominantly inhabit, yet everyone in the film is Slavic, to film a scene where the prop knife can be seen bending...

These people do not care about movie-making, and they do not care about their audience. They don't deserve a single star.