by Frank Calvillo
On the surface, Momentum has the look and feel of a low-budget standard actioner set in a foreign city (for tax reasons, probably) and featuring an assortment of character actors plus one name star in a glorified cameo designed to draw some attention.
All of this turns out to be true because it isn’t until later on in the proceedings that Momentum actually manages to go BEYOND the surface.
In Momentum, a beautiful thief named Alex (Olga Kurylenko) has come off an (overly) elaborate bank heist with her former lover (Colin Moss). When he’s murdered in front of her, Alex quickly finds herself thrust into a high-stakes battle between herself and a skilled criminal known only as Mr. Washington (James Purefoy), who is on a mission to retrieve a highly valuable drive for his corrupt senator boss (Morgan Freeman). With her former lover gone, Alex must put the pieces together about the drive’s secret contents herself before she is found.
Momentum represents the directorial debut of Stephen S. Campanelli, who can count many years of experience as Clint Eastwood’s camera operator on features such as Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby. With such impressive training, its a shame that Campanelli has taken such an overly stylized, video game-like approach to his first feature as a director. With a high-level dependency on slanted angles and quick cuts, Campanelli proves himself to be another of what Leonard Maltin once branded as “music video directors.” Too much fun with the comedic aspects and a frenetic pacing only add to the shakiness of Momentum and Campanelli’s level of directing.
Luckily, enough of Momentum’s rough edges manage to get smoothed out over time to discover that the film is actually worthwhile fun. In fact, there are moments when Momentum does manage to rise above its B-movie action pedigree, such as Purefoy’s fantastically dynamic entrance and the awesome chemistry Campanelli captures between the two leads, which surprisingly makes the movie slightly more credible.
As the film’s antagonist, Purefoy really works as Momentum’s secret weapon, making for an enjoyably compelling villain who has audiences eagerly awaiting his next scene. Freeman, on the other hand, clearly did this film as a favor. That isn’t to say the doesn’t do what he can, but his character only exists because the bad guys need a boss to report to.
In theory, the role of Alex is a great one for Kurylenko. The actress still remains as entrancing a presence as ever. Kurylenko has always intrigued me with projects she’s said yes to and her take on the women she’s portrayed, from a Bond girl to a French wife living in Texas. Her work here is enough reason to watch the film.
It’s great to see a female lead in a film like this, even if the character in question doesn’t always come across as well-written as she could be. Despite this, applause must be given to one of the film’s many action sequences which shows two women overpowering male henchmen in a harsh and realistic sequence. Its here where Momentum truly hits its stride as a female centric action film that doesn’t once talk down to women. Including Alex, Momentum features three women in three different roles, including a housewife and an assassin, with each one shown as strong, independent and resourceful. It was so incredibly refreshing to continuously observe how a character’s gender was never an issue when it came to the fighting aspects, or really ANY of the dark plot’s aspects.
Momentum’s hopes as the first installment in a future film series is more than obvious as evidenced by the film’s ending. And yet in a way “obvious” seems to be the wrong choice to describe the film’s close. Let’s just say that Alex is just getting started.
