Critic’s rating: ★★
(116 minutes; R)

American tough-guy mercenary with a heart of gold and a sad backstory (Chris Hemsworth) treks to a would-be exotic foreign land — this time, crowded Dhaka, Bangladesh — to rescue an innocent, the son of a jailed crime kingpin (Pankaj Tripathi), from the clutches of another bad guy (Randeep Hooda). The opposition baddie is so over-the-top evil that he has henchmen do his dirty deeds, like throwing a child off a building and encouraging a teen minion to cut off a finger as a show of loyalty.

It all feels like a glorified shoot-’em-up combat video game — ridiculously high body count, paper-thin characters, enough hardware to fill a paranoid anti-government militia type’s dreams, tightly choreographed fights and chases, and endless, pointless explosions.

Midway through the overlong two-hour action thriller, I completely stopped caring about the fate of such poorly drawn stick figures, and yet I watched it to the end, glutton for punishment that I am. The debut feature from Marvel movie stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave is based on a graphic novel, and resonates with me about as much. We’ve all seen — or played — this kind of thing before.

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