This shows why not to make a movie from the first draft. If the writers had done a little work on this, it could have been quite good. I don't know how Texas Rangers dress, nor do I care. MI-6 enlists him to help catch or kill a terrorist who's planning mass destruction in London. The terrorist is of course Irish, his main henchman is a Russian who is nearly indestructible. The fights he has with the ranger are ridiculously over the top. And repetitive. The ranger constantly, and without for the most part, his own gun, blasts heavily armed terrorists away again and again. Malkovich, for the first time in any role, sleep walks through this. Guess he needed a few bucks. Direction is pedestrian. This could have been so much better.
Plot summary
A Texas Ranger is recruited by British Intelligence to track down a dangerous terrorist and stop him from attacking London.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
June 09, 2023 at 12:48 PM
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With a little work this could have been WAY better
A Cowboy in London
Alex Tyree (Thomas Jane) is a Texas Ranger. The plot and optics force us to think of the (L)one Ranger as he meets with a Native American. There are some robbers headed down a road his way. He manages to get them all but one. Alex is contacted by Agent Jennifer Smith ( Dominique Tipper) of British intelligence to extradite him from Mexico. McBride (Dean Jagger) is an Irish terrorist working with Islam and the Russians to get a Howitzer to strike London with a dirty bomb. Tyree gets his typical plot script mismatch in Smith as a partner as they go to London to try to get their man without being noticed. They work for John Malkovich.
The characters were good. The plot started off decent but then went DOA in London as they couldn't make Tyree stick out as much as Crocodile Dundee.
Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.
This ain't it.
So, fair disclaimer ahead of time, I'm a pretty big fan of most of Thomas Jane's stuff. He's had some great roles that I really enjoyed, and I hoped that this movie would be another chance for him to shine.
Unfortunately, it really wasn't a chance for anyone to shine at all, not even John Malkovich.
Not exactly sure what I expected, I guess I just expected a decent action movie with a Texas Ranger chasing after a criminal. You know, normal stuff. What we got was a weird knock-off of Walker Texas Ranger with a bad script, acceptable fight scenes, and a lot of cliché lines that didn't fit the movie at all. It's like an AI took a bunch of segments from a handful of the most popular action movies and just slapped it all together to create this .... I'm not even sure what to call it. It's just a bunch of oddly disconnected scenes that don't make a lot of sense and are stitched together.
I would also like to point out how ridiculous the gun-play was. Because after realizing half-way through that the story was a bust, I thought maybe things can be somewhat redeemed with a few good gun battles. However, the directors of this movie clearly decided to roll with an emphasis on flashy, and completely ignore believable. There are several scenes where dozens of rounds are fired from handguns that can only hold half that amount. Rifles are given to the main characters from "tactical/strike teams" without sights. Rocket launchers are used on people like it's some kind of video game. Characters using machine guns one-handed, as if recoil doesn't exist and physics don't matter. It's like watching a bargain-bin 80's action movie from the local dollar store, but without the charm, awesome hairstyles, cool cars, and mirrored aviators worn by the main character.
Anyhow, I'm done wasting my time with this review, already wasted far too much time watching this movie. Swing, and a miss. Better luck next time, Thomas Jane.