Last Updated on January 12, 2024
PLOT: Steve Vail (Aaron Eckhart), a retired CIA agent who now works as a bricklayer, is called out of retirement to kill a former asset (Clifton Collins Jr) who’s gone rogue.
REVIEW: Never underestimate the appeal of a fun B-action movie. When done right, a fast-paced shoot-em-up can be just the tonic to cleanse the palate after a season of awards fare. Renny Harlin’s movie isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s a slickly assembled action flick that’s well-shot, and offers star Aaron Eckhart one of his best action roles to date.
His character, Steve Vail, is the hero of a series of novels written by the late Paul Lindsay under the name Noah Boyd. If this does well enough on VOD and digital, I could see it turning into a solid series for Eckhart, who’s perfect as the conscience-stricken former CIA agent.
The Bricklayer’s premise isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but what makes it good is the cast and the fact that they’ve got one of the most underrated action directors of all time at the helm, Renny Harlin. This feels like his biggest movie in a while, loaded with action setpieces and beautifully shot on location in Greece. One thing you can always be sure of with a Harlin movie is that it’ll look good, and the director, along with his DP Matti Eerikäinen, has made a movie that eschews the current trend of making everything dark. It’s bright and pleasant to look at, and you can see what’s happening in the action scenes.
While the budget was limited, you can’t really tell as Harlin jam-packed the film with at least five major action sequences for Eckhart. The actor, who’s in his fifties, got into killer shape for the role, doing most of the action himself. Eckhart is the opposite of a guy like Jason Statham in that he’s not physically invulnerable. He takes his licks over and over again in the movie, being stabbed, shot and beaten. Harlin and Eckhart make his injuries consistent as the film goes on, with him looking more and more beaten up as the movie approaches its conclusion. If anything, that makes Eckhart more appealing, as he has to rely on ingenuity and improvised weaponry during his scraps, such as a fantastic early fight in the rain where he uses his bricklaying kit to deadly effect.
The supporting cast is also strong, with Nina Dobrev likable as the analyst accompanying Vail on his mission. She gets in on the action but never becomes a stock character. She’s supposed to be inexperienced, so her action beats are scrappy and unpolished – which serves the premise. Tim Blake Nelson is also enjoyable as their smirking, cynical boss, while Clifton Collins Jr has fun as the somewhat sympathetic baddie.
While The Bricklayer isn’t a top-shelf action movie, given its limited resources, Harlin has made the most of it. It’s a lot more fun than you’d think, given how flooded the market is with movies like these. Harlin gives the film an old-school vibe, making it feel more like a nineties-action movie than the John Wick-style entry It’s being marketed as. This is almost more like a nineties-era James Bond movie (in a good way). It proves that Harlin still has a knack for action, and were he to be given a hefty budget; I bet he could make an action flick that would blow us all way. (Why, oh why, wasn’t he hired to do the last Expendables?)
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