This film is the utterly mirthless equivalent of someone who takes you out to dinner, buys a terrible meal, keeps cracking rubbish jokes and then pokes you in the ribs every 10 minutes as they repeatedly ask (without listening for an answer): “Isn’t this fun? Isn’t this fun?” No, it is not fun. Not even in a so-bad-it’s-good way.
A roster of talent that has either seen more glorious days – director Renny Harlin, stars Pierce Brosnan, Nick Cannon and Tim Roth – or are about to have their careers mildly blighted by association – younger cast members Jamie Chung, Hermione Corfield, Mike Angelo and Rami Jabar – are assembled for a half-baked heist plot set in, as someone describes sneeringly, “some country called Jazeristan”. In an excruciating feat of cognitive dissonance, bad faith and ill manners, the film manages to depict the Arab world as one mostly populated by rich funders of terror and bumbling suckers, while using eye-candy locations in Abu Dhabi and Dubai to add a veneer of glamour.
