I’m a huge fan of Scott Adkins. How the guy isn’t the next James Bond is beyond me. Well, not quite beyond me if I’m totally honest and flicks like the ‘Incoming’ movie are a symptom, rather than the cause of his problems.
If he’d enjoyed his action star rise to fame in the decades prior he would be up there with the Neeson’s and Stallone’s of this world. He’s a legit martial artist and a far more convincing fighter on and off screen than both. When he put’s his mind to it, he can act convincingly enough to support his incredible physical presence on screen too. If he’d been of the same era, he’d have had his chance at a serious film or two.
So why isn’t Scott Adkins successful?
Adkins is just twenty years too late. As a result he’s limited to B movies and, occasionally, chunks of C Grade crap like the ‘Incoming’ movie to get paid, which seriously hinders any chance of a mainstream role despite the adulation of action fans the world over.
As for ‘Incoming’ as a film in his repertoire overall?
This is a movie that I’m saving you two hours of your life by reviewing.
You’re welcome.
Is the Incoming movie that bad?
The movie opens with an intro that’s too long, punctuated by some special effects so hideous I thought I was watching explosions in the first Independence day film. I do kind of want to steal the font for the blog though, so maybe I didn’t waste the whole evening.
Strangely, it isn’t the evident lack of budget (Made in Serbia should be warning enough) that ruins the film. In fact, the set design is pretty good if we excuse the power room, we think the money had run out by that point or everyone had just given up and got blasted on Vodka.
The music is excellent, it just doesn’t have anything to beat to. There’s glimmers of decent humour and even some hints of meaning and message at occasions in the dialogue. The scriptwriters almost got there. The monologue delivered by the lead terrorist ‘Argun’ late in the film to the heroine is utterly wasted in the ‘Incoming’ movie, which is a shame, it’s almost thought provoking.
Outer space prison films require us to briefly abstain from realities like ‘why would this even be a thing’ so it isn’t the disbelief in the plot (or lack of one) what kills the film either.
So what makes ‘Incoming’ such a bad film?
What kills the ‘Incoming’ movie is the acting, especially the accents and vocals. The last nail in this steaming space coffin is the characters themselves. The villains aren’t well developed enough to love, loathe or sympathise with for a start.
Argun is convincing enough despite occasional attempts at Christian Bale’s strained batman voice. But some of his cohorts are laughably ham all the way through. We doubt some of them actually went to acting school, probably just jobless locals rounded up out of the Serbian equivalent of the village pub.
I’ve a few Serbian friends who on their weekends could do a better job of moody and malevolent than this bunch. Seriously, all you would have to do is wake them early and not give them coffee.
The villains however, are excellent compared to the ‘good guys’. The IMDB ratings for ‘Incoming’ should tell you all you need to know and it get’s an incredible 4% on rotten tomatoes too.
Still, I had to suffer through two hours of this crap, so let me elaborate.
Swedish/Australian actor Lukas Loughran is first for blame, as the least offensive offender… Note – this is the first highlight of a running theme too. Whilst it seems that the entire bad guy crew can keep up with comedy German accents that would make Alan Rickman’s Die Hard character blush. Lukas makes frequent slips from upper class Brit back into his native Aussie twang. So why make the guy a Brit in the first place? Almost no one in this movie is playing their own nationality and it consistently and jarringly shows.
Also Hollywood. Most of us Brit’s don’t talk like extras from Downton Abbey.
We’d appreciate if you’d get this through your heads. Y’all hear now?
In the first few minutes of the film, you think Lukas Loughran’s ‘Kingsley’ might turn into an interesting part. This is a shame because he’s ultimately vague, weak, implausible and confused as an identity within the script. He had it together for less time than the average intermission.
Pretty much like everyone else in this film.
Aaron McCusker is up next. A northern Irishman playing a jaded cynical american space pilot. Unlike Loughran, McCusker’s been in a few films you will of heard of, so god knows how they signed him up to this mess. Perhaps he’s Nicholas Cage broke.
He’s, as best I can tell, technically the ‘main’ hero of the bunch for the middle section of the film. But, he’s so laughably underwhelming you can’t root for the guy at all. I’ve seen cabbages with more charisma. Fortunately for him, he’s likely to play his next jaded role from the right starting position after this.
You might think i’d save a section for Scott Adkins till last but, I can’t. As much as I resent him for starring in this drivel, it’s hard to see what else he could do with it once he’d agreed. He’s also not even close to the actor who ruins the film so badly it doesn’t matter what anyone else does. We’ll come to that, first things first. I’m not letting Adkins off that easy.
He’s just as convincing physically as he has been in every film the man’s played in his life. He’s possibly the most complete martial artist of the last generation. It’s what made his performances as Yori Boyka so watchable despite the films being utter trash in every other way. That talent is what makes guilty pleasure B movies out of scripts, rather than this trash.
Adkins has shown in the past that he can play good guy, villain and even anti hero. In ‘Incoming’ either the scriptwriters or the director thought they’d challenge him to do all three in one film. It doesn’t quite work. Also, don’t put the most proficient martial arts star in the world in an action film and then restrict the fight scenes to about ten minutes run time.
If Adkin’s can’t say no to these films, he will soon have no career at all.
There’s one person who utterly ruins ‘Incoming’ as a film.
I’ve never heard of Michelle Lehane. Hopefully, I’m never going to watch another film with her in either. There’s plenty of legit female action stars out there, just watch Charlize Theron for a perfect example of a woman who exudes physical presence in her roles. She can act too.
What we get with Dr Stone, Lehane’s character, isn’t any of that. What we get is the predictable well-intentioned idiot who gets pretty much everyone else killed. Nothing unusual in that role. What is surprising is that she somehow morphs into the heroine of the whole piece.
Despite releasing the prisoners in the first place. Constantly hating on the rational solution to the problem in an action film (Adkins killing them all). And generally being vaguely annoying in that, unlike most other people who’ve played this role in films in the past, she doesn’t die a suitable death way before the end of this movie.
Instead our woke justice warrior kills Adkin’s off ten minutes before the end and sails off into the sunset to reveal that the nasty governments of the world have been waterboarding misunderstood terrorists at a black site (those same terrorists have being trying to destroy a global city for the whole movie).
I don’t know if this is somehow supposed to appeal to a particular segment of society at the moment or if it’s parody. It fail’s at both, as does Lehane. The most satisfying thing she does in the whole film is get punched in the mouth, something audiences will be praying for if they’ve suffered the film that long.
In fairness to her, between the writers, director and producer, she may not have been able to do anything with the script other than play it as is. If being the most loathed heroine in the worst space picture ever was her best option, she succeeded.
‘Incoming’ Movie review summary.
There’s just too many conflicting things going on in this film to make use of any of them. the opening dialogue makes us think we may get an action comedy. We see sparks of this throughout, with a delightfully cheesy light-saber like duel of stun batons towards the end and the comedic national stereotypes of the mission heads back on earth.
Then the film tries to be serious, handling mistreatment of prisoners, how people standing up for their beliefs is important and the like. The earlier mentioned monologue is an example of this and it’s what Dr Stone attempts through out the film. Though she does flip round her belief set in a virtue signalling array that would make the average politician blush.
The fact is that the ‘Incoming’ Movie can’t decide what it, or any of is main characters are supposed to be. And flashes of any particular direction or another are lost, like the soundtrack, in a slow buildup to an ending which is a blessed relief.