This is an at-times incomprehensible action comedy that is everything bad about Michael Bay films rolled into one movie. The saving grace, if it can be called that, is that the film is funny, at times, and it picks up in pace once it finally stops with the backstory.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this movie. It has “high” production values in the sense that, at times, it looks really good, like you would expect a Michael Bay film. But it’s also incredibly cheap, at times, despite its $150 million budget. The opening is so flashy the film needs a warning, but it really feels like it’s disguising a lack of budget. In the opening Florence sequence, there are some terrible continuity errors which I cannot believe were missed in post. (Two examples: the shots of them in the car often have fields in the background. At one point, someone shoots at them fright side but the bullet hits the left side of the car.)

There are 6 main characters and most of them get a bit of backstory. There are flashbacks galore and flashbacks within flashbacks. It feels like nobody worked out the timeline. The film is one of the more confusing Hollywood action films I’ve ever seen in terms of the sequence of events. And I’m not sure there’s any reason for it.

Much of the comedy doesn’t work. The film relies almost entirely on Reynolds ‘ personality for its comedy. Other actors get similar lines but the delivery doesn’t work (and/or Bay’s direction does them no favours).

There are some decent live action stunts, rather a lot of them. But there are also really dumb ones that don’t make sense and the whole magnet thing in the climax doesn’t make sense. (There are so many things that don’t make sense I couldn’t keep track.)

But I did laugh more than a couple times, either at deaths or at lines. So that made me up the rating a point.

It’s still way too long and probably the most incoherent Michael Bay film I’ve ever seen which is saying something.

3/10