Courier, The

Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: October 9, 2012.
Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Cast: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mickey Rourke, Josie Ho, Til Schweiger
Year: 2012
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The Movie:

I feel like what I'm witnessing in far too many films today is a Grampa Simpson line, “Our movie had a twist...which was the style of the time.” Part action movie, part suspense The Courier begins with a good premise but soon loses its way and never finds it again.

The story focuses on the courier (Morgan), a man of action but well-suited to delivering packages, no questions asked. He's soon approached by a tough-seeming Russian (Schweiger) who gives him a briefcase and an enigmatic name to deliver it to. Oh and the courier has to find him (did I mention he's also The Finder?) in 5 days or bad things will start happening to his loved ones.

So the courier is soon employing numerous tricks (computer hacking! lockpicking! seeing things!) to track down the mysterious recipient, the nefarious Evil Silve. He's aided by a very annoying sidekick, Anna (Ho), who can steal cars and fly planes. Handy. But he's also set against by another mystery man, someone remaining in shadow who takes ominous phone calls and receives faxes of doom, or something. This evil figure is after the briefcase and, of course, the courier himself. He dispatches his “capos” to find him (Miguel Ferrer and Lily Allen but, really, do they not know what that term means?) and get rid of him and anyone else that gets in their way.

Thus beset, and losing a close friend in the process, the courier doggedly tracks down Evil Silve, even after finding out that the FBI is using him to do so. The courier tries more tricks, gets tricked and subsequently tortured by the capos, finishes them off and finally tracks his prey to Las Vegas. There, he happens to glance in a mirror and sees a scrolling marquee to understand what Evil Silve is backwards. Knowledge is power! So it's an inevitable showdown between the courier and not Evil Silve, exactly, but a guy named Maxwell (Rourke) who looks like a drunkenly-confused drag queen.

At this point the big twist/reveal that's been shoddily propped up since the beginning tries to bring everything together and give the courier the ultimate insight into his true identity. In actuality this movie should come with safety goggles since so many loose pieces of story are flying through the air and come messily crashing together at this point. It's a befuddled story that's not so much of an, “Aha!” as it is a, “I think this is what's they're trying to do?” And then it just ends, trying to leave some ambiguity about it all but, really, instead it just peters out and gets a merciful cut to the end credits.

Audio/Video/Extras:

This DVD from Well Go USA looks pretty decent in its widescreen (16:9) presentation. Audio is served up English-only by either a 5.1 Dolby Digital or 2.0 Stereo soundtrack. The 5.1 track rumbles along very well and helps prop up the action in the film. The only subtitles available are in English as well. For extras, 7 deleted or extended scenes are included along with a “Behind the Scenes” featurette (about :24 min.) that interviews just about every actor in the movie and they fall all over each other about how great they think this production is.

The Final Word:

A decent premise that gets ruined with sloppy storytelling and a ridiculous twist The Courier is still a halfway-decent little action film.