The derelict Castle Heights Hospital is not just an eyesore in Birmingham, Alabama's skyline - it's also a reminder of the city's segregated past. Or that's what the mayor keeps telling the media, at least; the building is condemned and set to be demolished in three days, with a (modest) media circus set up to celebrate its passing.
The old hospital is also the hiding place for three duffle bags with a million dollars each, hidden there by Lando, a drug dealer (Eric Gray) who stole the money from a rival dealer (Robert Berlin). Both of them have since been incarcerated.
The film takes its time to get to the money, though; First it carefully establishes the two protagonists. Mike Wade (Scott Adkins) is a washed-up MMA fighter who came over from the 'original' Birmingham at a friend's request when he opened up a gym. It didn't work out. Any hope for contender status shattered, broke and homeless, he takes a menial job with the cleanup crew at the condemned hospital.
Meanwhile, Richard Ericson (Dolph Lundgreen, who also directs) is a little better off - he's at least got a house and a stable job as a prison guard. But his daughter (Ida Lundgreen) has blood cancer; With the American health system being what it is, he needs to scrounge up four hundred thousand dollars because they deem the treatment she needs to be 'experimental'.
As a director, Lundgreen takes a leisurely, fly-on-the-wall approach for this first half of the movie, letting the dramatic material breathe. This is obviously good for budgetary reasons, and their stories are a little bland for the runtime that's devoted to them - but it just about works because the characters are great and the script provides some specificity to their (very relatable) situations. Wade's MMA background also gives us a decent early fight (with Evan Dane Taylor), but... yeah, the first forty minutes or so here are all table-setting.
Not just character introductions. The plot is set in motion by Lando, the guy who originally hid the money in the hospital. When he hears the hospital is about to be demolished, he reaches out to the only guard he trusts - Ericson, of course - and tells him about the money in exchange for protection from the guy he stole the money from.
That guy's not idle, either: alerted by some corrupt cops of Lando's deal, he reaches out to his brother outside the slammer (Scott Hunter) to assemble a team of gunmen, follow Ericson and get the money back. And of course, on the eve of the building coming down, Wade discovers the duffel bags while pulling apart some furniture. He hides it back and decides to come back to get it after his shift is done.
So there you go: the stage is set. I'm not going to lie and say it doesn't drag at points (a piss-poor dream sequence is the worst offender in the padding out department), but it's a really cool premise, mostly well laid out. Almost half-way into the movie's ninety-minute runtime (and with a couple hours left within the movie until the building blows up) Wade and Ericson go into the building separately to retrieve the moolah, the latter followed by half a dozen armed thugs. From there it becomes a running battle - first between Wade and Ericson, then both of them against the rest of the world when they inevitably team up.
There are quite a few fist fights, a couple shootouts (gunfights are risky due to the building being full of explosives) and a few tense chases as the principals try to sneak around the armed thugs. The action is good, not great - the choreographies are very grounded and a little slow, with Adkins doing the lion's share of the work. The developing dynamic between the two protagonists is great to watch, though, and the mooks hunting them get a little colour and some fun lines as well.
Most of the movie's flaws are down to it being your quintessential DTV (or is it DTS now?) film; The sort where you can barely talk about production design, just a ready-made locations to shoot in (the Lundgren construction company posters were cute, but that's as far as it gets). Similarly, all the setup with the Mayor and the media watching the demolition from the sidelines doesn't really serve any purpose except to set up a (very funny) gag when someone falls out a window and no one notices; If there's any subtext to these cash-strapped people risking their lives for money while politicians and the media watch on from the other side of the street, the subtleties were lost on me.
The script and the action also have a few hiccups: expect people to use an infinite ammo cheat, for example. The pacing is slightly off until the film hits its stride in the third act, and there's also a couple of crowd-pleasing epilogues I didn't care much for. Relatively minor issues, but noticeable.
Lundgren's style is unobtrusive, after a couple of non-chronological flourishes near the beginning, and action-wise he makes sure we can see everything properly and doesn't do a lot beyond that. The film is divided into character chapters until it isn't, and a cheesy chronometer runs with the countdown until the explosion every now and then. All blood is digital as expected; I was hoping they'd run the shoot on a building that was scheduled to be demolished in reality, so they could use that on the film, but no such luck; A crappy CGI demolition it is.
Still, it's a good old-fashioned, no-frills action movie. I'd prefer it to have a little more weirdness, a little more oomph, but it's still an extremely solid and likeable scrappy little b-movie.
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