The Bricklayer
Great Value brand Jack Ryan.
Cast of Characters:
Steve Vail – Aaron Eckhart
Agent Kate Bannon – Nina Dobrev
O’Malley – Tim Blake Nelson
Tye – Ilfenesh Hadera
Victor Radek – Clifton Collins, Jr.
Director – Renny Harlin
Writer – Hanna Weg & Matt Johnson
Based on the novel The Bricklayer by Paul Lindsay writing as Noah Boyd
Producer – Jeffrey Greenstein, Yariv Lerner, Jonathan Yunger, Heidi Jo Markel, Robert Van Norden
Distributor – Vertical Entertainment
Running Time – 110 minutes
Rated R for strong violence, and language.
Former CIA operative Steve Vail (Aaron Eckhart) has moved on from his days as a field agent and is now living a peaceful life filled with classical jazz music and bricklaying.
Annnnd cue all that being interrupted for “one last mission” in three… two… one…
That idyllic, cozy life comes crashing to a halt when Vail is brought back out of retirement by CIA director O’Malley (Tim Blake Nelson) for – yep, you guessed it. One last mission. This time, the assignment is bringing down Victor Radek (Clifton Collins, Jr.), a former agent turned rogue extortionist who’s assassinating foreign journalists and framing the agency in hopes of securing a pricey blackmail fortune as payback for past betrayals. Despite his initial reluctance, Vail eventually agrees to the mission due to his history with Radek. Teaming up with hotshot rookie agent Kate Bannon (Nina Dobrev), the crime-fighting pair set out for Greece to stop the shadowy insurgent’s attacks.
There was once a time when Finnish journeyman director Renny Harlin was a staple of ’90s action cinema. Even with a mid-decade career setback like the critical and box office bomb Cutthroat Island, Harlin still gave us entertaining popcorn fare such as Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight (arguably his best movie) and Deep Blue Sea.
Then the 2000’s arrived – Driven, Mindhunters, Exorcist: The Beginning, The Covenant, 12 Rounds, The Legend of Hercules, Skiptrace. To say the past two decades have not been kind to him would be an understatement. Nevertheless, he we are back again with a new Harlin feature, this time following the adventures of Steve Vail in The Bricklayer, which based on the spy thriller novel of the same name by the late Paul Lindsay (under the pseudonym Noah Boyd).
An adaptation of Lindsay’s novel was first announced over ten years ago in 2011 with Gerard Butler set to star and produce. Come a decade later, in 2022, Butler got swapped out for the artist formerly known as Two-Face, Aaron Eckhart (coincidentally, Butler’s co-star in the first two Has Fallen films). While we can only wonder how different of a movie The Bricklayer would be with Butler leading the way, Eckhart himself is a fine actor with the requisite stature and presence needed for these types of physically demanding roles.
Ultimately, though, it doesnt matter who we have leading the way here. Sure, with Butler in charge of the mission, we may have gotten more of his trademark macho charisma, but you’d still be left with The Bricklayer’s terribly generic storyline.
I’m not sure what happened to Harlin post-21st century, but the career highlights from his ’90s heyday had a sense of slick style and energy that made them fun. No, they weren’t masterpieces, but they were successful efforts that checked off all the boxes of the action genre.
With The Bricklayer, it appears that Harlin is opting for a different approach, exchanging his electric, action-packed style for something akin to sharp, complex character-driven spy thrillers like The Day of the Jackal, Three Days of the Condor or Marathon Man. That would be all fine and good if Harlin displayed the subtle filmmaking touch of Fred Zinnemann, Sydney Pollack and John Schlesinger. That’s hardly his style, however, even on his best days at the office. There’s no intrigue or sense of urgency to the central conflict and characters lack the nuance necessary to bring depth and complexity. Writers Hanna Weg and Matt Johnson attempt to build suspense and intrigue through backstories, double-crossings and a pointless false ending that feels tacked on. Instead, viewers are subjected to just another flat, uninteresting storyline filled with even more uninteresting, one-note spy thriller caricatures, resulting in a picture that is bland and completely void of any tension.
I’m not expecting The Godfather here, but that’s still surprising coming from the man who gave us the far superior spy thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight (granted, it really helps to have both a great Shane Black script and Geena Davis performance to work with).
The Bricklayer shows a few signs of life, albeit far too few, when Harlin settles back into his comfort zone and delivers action. Not that the action here is anything to write home about, especially with today’s viewers being spoiled by the like of John Wick and Mission: Impossible. Even by Harlin’s standards, the action sequences are, at best, serviceable, being held back by the occasional dodgy CGI (specifically, CGI blood and a very noticeably green-screened car drive), but a well-choreographed car chase during the film’s climax does stand out as a highlight for the film.
It also begs the question as to how they can nail that but not something as simple as a routine car drive.
Of course, all of the above criticisms about the lackluster story and character development could be overlooked if it really delivered the action goods. I mean, let’s be honest, no one’s mistaking Cliffhanger or Deep Blue Sea for Blade Runner or Inception, but, as I previously said, they at least check off all the necessary requirements for a good action film. If you’re gonna skimp on the substance, okay then, but now you’re requiring your style to do all the heavy lifting, so you better bring your style A-game in that department. The Bricklayer makes a few attempts to provide some much-needed jolts to the proceedings but they wind up producing more of a spark than an all-out bang.
As for our titular protagonist, Aaron Eckhart does what he can with what little the script provides him. The chemistry between him and co-star Nina Dobrev is non-existent causing the “rebellious veteran” vs. the “by-the-books rookie” buddy cop tandem Harlin’s aiming for to fall flat, but Eckhart at least acquits himself solidly as the growly bruiser (the same can’t be said for invaluable veteran character actors Tim Blake Nelson and Clifton Collins, Jr., who are saddled with playing extremely stock, tropey genre types as Eckhart’s no-nonsense boss and the film’s villain, respectively).
If only the script was given a little more TLC, ’cause Eckhart has proven a number of times how great of an actor he is with the right material (In the Company of Men, Thank You for Smoking, Towelhead, The Dark Knight, Bleed for This).
Consensus: Aaron Eckhart is suitably gruff as the titular hero, but solid work from the veteran actor and a couple decent action sequences from director Renny Harlin are hardly enough to save The Bricklayer from being another ho-hum, by-the-numbers actioner.
Silver Screen Fanatic’s Verdict: I give The Bricklayer a D (★).
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