(This review may contain spoilers).
I actually wasn’t planning to watch this movie, as I haven’t actually seen any of the films in this franchise before. But I had a day off and this was still showing, so I decided to go ahead.
I didn’t feel like this film was particularly deep, which wasn’t a bad thing. I liked the characters, especially Adele. I would have liked to learn a bit more about her background, although the brief little character profiles were interesting to see and added a new dimension to the movie; at least in my opinion.
While I didn’t like Nina Dobrev’s character in the Vampire Diaries, I didn’t mind her character, Becky, in this. She made me outright laugh at times with her lack of a filter.
I didn’t really have any opinions on Xiang and his team when they first appeared. They originally seemed like stereotypical bad guys; and Serena came across as quite unstable. As the movie went on, though, I was able to connect better to them emotionally and I felt they had a lot more depth than they’d seemed to at first. And despite having seen Donnie Yen (Xiang) in another film quite recently, I didn’t have any confusion. (Rogue One, in case anyone’s wondering).
Along with Adele, I did particularly like Serena… at least as the film went on. There was a lot of good action in this movie and I did care about the characters and the storyline. While there was real danger involved, I felt like the person responsible for what was happening hadn’t been foreshadowed. The other villain was much more obvious.
While there were moments where it was hard to suspend my disbelief, it was good to have a clear idea of who the good guys were and who the bad guys were, even if things did change later. And it was nice to see the groups working together towards the end.
All told, I did enjoy this film and it was easy to watch even without having seen any of the other movies in this franchise. It didn’t require any thinking, but it was a lot of fun.
Ink of Blood 