Review: Renegades đź‘Ž
Let’s imagine this: Take a typical US-American action movie about a band of elite soldiers — Navy SEALs in this case — and try to somehow merge it with a heist movie. Sounds like a stupid idea? Well, the makers of Renegades [IMDb, Trailer (YouTube)] apparently thought it to be a stroke of brilliance.
Matt Barnes (Sullivan Stapleton) and his team are deployed to Bosnia in the course of a NATO intervention during the Bosnian conflict — which is something that historically never actually happened. The movie starts out with them infiltrating a building, coupled with a undercover mission by two team members, who pretend to be from the press. The mission of course goes completely pear-shaped and the team has to improvise a new escape route, which ends up as a chase through a Bosnian city with them in a stolen tank and the enemies throwing everything from bazooka shots to tank shells at them. Back at the base, they have to face the half-arsed ire of their commanding officer, played by none other than J. K. Simmons in his classic role as the not-quite-serious and slightly dimwitted superior.
Some time later, the Barnes and his team are bored and feel misplaced in their current mission, where their particular talents are not really needed at all. All that changes, when one of the SEALs, Stanton Baker (Charlie Bewley), falls in love with Lara (Sylvia Hoeks), a local girl. She tells him of a treasure buried deep in the lake, consisting of “Nazi gold”, which — as shown in the opening scene — was stolen by the Nazis somewhere in France and brought all the way to Bosnia, so they can store it in a bank in a small, insignificant town just downstream of a massive dam. And yes, the resistance actually blew up that dam and thus sunk the entire city. So, bored but skilled as they are, they decide to salvage that treasure, agreeing to give half of it to Lara, so she can use it to help rebuild her country.
And that’s pretty much it. The rest of it is filled with snarky banter between the soldiers, some scuffles with local criminals and lots of explosions, courtesy of a bad-tempered enemy — only referred to as “Petrovic” — who sends his troops against Barnes’ team, hoping to take revenge on them for their earlier infiltration of his domain. And of course, his interference turns the — not particularly well-planned — heist into an even more dangerous situation.
The only good thing I can really say about this movie is that it is only 106 minutes long. Seriously, it is that bad. Combining the two genres is a stupid idea, because good heist movies don’t need to be spiced up. And war-themed action movies rarely are subtle or clever. Those two just don’t mix well. The only thing that made it bearable in the end was actually the ridiculousness of it all, especially thanks to J. K. Simmons’ performance. Every time he addresses the team in an ever more derogatory way I couldn’t help but laugh.
But honestly…don’t waste your time on it. If you want a good heist movie, just go back to the classics like The Sting or more modern ones like The Italian Job.
