A pair of former secret agents have their Gdańsk honeymoon interrupted by a complex espionage plot and dozens of armed killers in Alarum, now available for rent or purchase on VOD services worldwide. This largely by-the-numbers action thriller actually boasts a reasonably compelling story and some fun performances, but the spartan production design and shoddy post-production visual effects sink it. Premiering against the extremely similar Back in Action, now streaming on Netflix, probably doesn’t help.
Alarum actually opens in Prague, which is conveyed through some Pond 5 aerial stock footage and what appears to be a single stock photo of a Malá Strana street projected onto a hotel room window. Inside, CIA super spy Joe (Scott Eastwood) cleanly takes out some baddies before being ambushed by Lara (Willa Fitzgerald), and the two end up crashing through the window and onto the street below.
The film will soon transition to Gdańsk, Poland five years later, but all European locations in Alarum appear to be played by counterparts in (where else?) Oxford, Ohio; a single Polish street sign, prominently placed in the center of the frame in multiple shots during the film’s climax, does a lot of the heavy lifting.
In Gdańsk, Joe and Lara are now happily married, though they also might be part of the shady titular organization, a group of former spies bent on bringing down the global intelligence network. Or something like that. The film doesn’t really bother to explain its protagonists or their motivations (“Does it matter?” Eastwood’s character quips when asked if he’s a member of Alarum), which is an… interesting choice.
Joe and Lara’s “honeymoon” involves traveling to a Polish lodge of historic significance (played by the Hueston Woods Lodge & Conference Center in Oxford, Ohio), and Joe is displeased to learn that Lara is actually working a case in the area: one that comes crashing into the nearby forest in the form of an airplane. At the crash site, Joe retrieves a “flight pill” from the stomach of one of the pilots, which is one of the more unusual ways to transport a flash drive.
The flash drive is sought by Orlin (Mike Colter), a foreign agent whose distinction is even more vague than our protagonists. He was on the plane, sitting next to the pilot who had swallowed the drive, but here’s his master plan on how to obtain it: shoot both pilots, jump out of the plane with a parachute, and show up at the crash site with an army of Polish mercenaries. It’s foolproof—unless a former CIA agent who happens to be taking a walking tour by the crash site goes digging around in the corpses first.
CIA Director Burbridge (D.W. Moffett) isn’t involved in any of this, but gets clued in on the goings-on when a match for Joe’s voice comes through on the pilot’s radio. Locating his top agent, who has been missing for five years, Burbridge immediately puts out a hit on him. Joe’s former partner Chester (Sylvester Stallone), who happens to be in neighboring Bratislava, takes the assignment.
What’s on the drive? Who are all these people? Does it really matter? There’s a lot going on here, but the film is largely flippant towards delivering any kind of explanation to its audience. That can be fun, and the CIA’s poor attempts to manage a situation they don’t understand are reminiscent of Burn After Reading, but after awhile we feel like we’re just being strung along for the action.
There’s plenty of that on display in Alarum, but the film is marred by unusually subpar VFX work, which tacks on cartoonish muzzle flashes and blood spurts that detract from some proficient action choreography. The filmmakers do their best with what feels like an awfully tight budget (Burbridge directs the CIA from a nondescript Ohio basement), but the effects work really hammers home what level of movie this is.
What Alarum does have is some engaging performances from a cast that deserves better. Both Eastwood and Stallone are fun to watch here, but it’s Fitzgerald—who lit up the screen in last year’s indie hit Strange Darling—who walks away with the film. Despite the presence of major action movie stars, it’s her takedown of the mercenaries at the lodge that provides Alarum with its big action highlight.
Alarum was directed by Michael Polish, once a talented indie filmmaker who made Twin Falls Idaho (brother and former filmmaking partner Mark Polish appears here as the assistant to the CIA Director). He’s capable of turning something like this into passable entertainment—as seen in the Mel Gibson–Emilie Hirsch thriller Force of Nature—but this one comes up short, especially premiering against Netflix’s extremely similar and far more polished Back in Action.
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Was surprised to see Prague come up in the first scene 🙂 Not a bad time waster but Scott deserves better