The Numbers Station, 2013.
Directed by Kasper Barfoed.
Starring John Cusak, Malin Akerman, Liam Cunningham and Hannah Murray.
SYNOPSIS:
A former black ops agent and the young woman he’s assigned to protect fight for survival after a surprise attack.
Directed by Kasper Barfoed (The Candidate) and produced by Bryan and Sean Furst (Daybreakers), The Numbers Station is a story of espionage laced with a factor of isolation. John Cusack plays Emerson; a Black Ops agent who is given a final chance by his boss, Grey (played by Liam Cunningham) after his conscience gets the better of him during his previous mission. He is assigned to a rural CIA broadcast station to protect Katherine (played by Malin Akerman) whose job it is to ensure coded transmissions are made to field agents. However, it isn’t long before this seemingly straightforward assignment becomes a lot harder than he had anticipated.
After what seemed like an overly-long credits sequence the film goes straight into the action as we witness Emerson and his boss, Grey, carry out their normally perfectly executed job requirements. Except this time it doesn’t go to plan and things don’t go well for Cusack’s character, the upshot being that we see him assigned to rural England; Suffolk in particular, to a seemingly derelict, heavily-shielded bunker. Here he must ensure that his partner Katherine carries out her duties as a code transmission specialist without any problems. The bunker comes under attack from an unknown force with Emerson and Katherine becoming sealed in and awaiting help.
Although Barfoed delivers good pace and tension to the story, for me it seems undecided as to whether it should be an action film or one purely based on a siege mentality. As a result neither of them is given enough substance and the film doesn’t reach its full potential. Cusack’s character is quite interesting in so much that I was unsure where his loyalties would lie as the story unfolded, but the spy figure he portrayed in Grosse Pointe Blank was a lot more complete; consequently the film needs to provide fulfilment elsewhere but it doesn’t come. As the film tips between the siege scenario and an action flick, there is little time for the characters to becoming more closely involved. This again hinders the film’s chances of having the viewer concerned with the outcome. To combat this, what little character development present is a result of them psycho analysing one another; this seemed a bit of a cheap way of doing so to me. I also felt that the flashbacks may had more effect if they actually hadn’t been included, thereby letting the viewer imagine what had happened, given the environment in which the film is set.
It’s by no means a bad film, just not as good as I would normally expect from John Cusack given his catalogue of films. Much of it has been seen before and because it doesn’t capitalise on one particular area, it is nothing more than average.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
J-P Wooding – Follow me on Twitter.
Originally published May 27, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
