Review: 6 Days

The true story of the Iranian embassy siege in London in 1980 by a bunch of Iranian terrorists. Whilst police negotiator Mark Strong attempts to keep the situation calm and reason with the terrorists in the hopes of the safe release of hostages, the SAS (including Jamie Bell) are awaiting the call to go into action if need be. Abbie Cornish is a BBC reporter on the outside reporting on the matter.

I wouldn’t mind betting that this 2017 hostage drama from director Toa Fraser (director of “The Dead Lands”, writer-director of the ballet movie “Giselle”) and screenwriter Glenn Standring (“The Dead Lands”) is pretty close to factual. Why? Because it certainly doesn’t play out in an enjoyable way from a narrative standpoint. It’s 75 minutes’ worth of waiting around for the SAS to finally make their move, and when said move happens there’s barely any time left for action. That’s 75 minutes’ worth of thumb-twiddling, albeit with a very fine performance by a calm Mark Strong. Sorry, but I need a whole helluva lot more than that, even if it means straying from the truth if need be. And boy does it appear to need be. This is “Argo” without the quirks that made “Argo” an interesting and unique story, otherwise you’ve just got an Iranian hostage drama. I’m afraid that’s one of my least favourite subjects.

Also not helping things here is Abbie Cornish with a wholly unconvincing act (including her overdone English accent) as a TV news reporter. She’s putting on too much of a clichéd TV reporter act to the point where it’s distractingly laughable. She seems to come from a comedic film. Worse? Her character is useless, she, like most everyone else here (including the audience) just stands around waiting for something to happen. Jamie Bell immediately impresses as a somewhat cocky SAS guy, but like I said, the SAS spend almost the entire film waiting to be written into the story. I get it, they can’t move in any sooner or else there’d be no film, but why introduce them so early anyway? I wouldn’t have had them turn up on screen until at least the halfway point. Instead, by bringing them in right away you get the audience assuming these are important characters, and their role is ultimately about 10 minutes’ worth of on-screen action, leaving you (and the film itself) massively deflated. That’s a shame, because the first 15 minutes or so are actually pretty tense and well-paced, and as I say, Mark Strong is as good as ever. Ultimately though, once you cotton on to the fact that it’s a waiting game, the tension completely dissipates before the halfway point. I probably would’ve liked a little more context to the situation early on as well, but then that’d probably make the film slower and duller I guess. The lead terrorist character is potentially an interesting one, but sadly not fleshed out enough or given enough screen time for anything more than untapped potential.

Very run-of-the-mill stuff where the tension dissipates before the halfway point, as characters wait to be written into the story and the audience waits for something to happen. “Argo” it ain’t.

Rating: C