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Home / Entertainment

Is this the worst film of 2018 - already?

NZ Herald
18 Jan, 2018 12:22 AM2 mins to read

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      'Renegades' has been described as an "early contender for 2018's worst film".

      It's from the creators of Taken, features high-stakes action sequences and stars the always impressive JK Simmons.

      But Renegades, a new military comedy movie that's just hit UK theatres, has not fared well with critics, gaining a 0 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

      One called it "second-rate" while others compared it to a really bad episode of The A-Team.

      The film follows a group of Navy Seals hired to recover a Nazi gold treasure trove at the bottom of a Bosnian lake.

      But after its UK release, critics slammed it as "gung-ho nonsense" and "less enjoyable than a week at boot camp".

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      "Forget The Expendables, the crew in Renegades are more The Expositionals, barking out plot points in between primal belches of macho dialogue," wrote TimeOut's Simon Crook.

      "It's amiable stuff, but rather infantile - about as hard-bitten and plausible as an episode of The A-Team, and with a similar standard of acting," said Ed Potton from The Times.

      "There is a spectacular scene in which someone drives a tank off a bridge, and JK Simmons gives the film some ballast as the guys' scowling commanding officer, but the rest of the time this resembles a TV movie of egregious averageness," wrote The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw.

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      "If Danny Ocean and Barney Ross from The Expendables had a baby, it might look something like this," said Empire's John Nugent.

      Nugent said the film's"most baffling scene" involved the film's stars "engaging in a fistfight with a team of SAS soldiers, set to Ini Kamoze's 1994 reggae fusion hit Here Comes The Hotstepper".

      The only one to emerge unscathed was Simmons, a veteran character actor soon to star in the high concept TV show Counterparts.

      Directed by Final Desination 5's Steven Quale and written by The Fifth Element's Luc Besson, there are currently no plans for Renegades to reach New Zealand cinemas.

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