Carter (3 Stars)

Netflix Thursday #15

It's Thursday again already? Almost. While I was at home I only watched Netflix on Thursday, if at all, but Netflix is all I have while I'm on holiday. So it's Thursday every day of the week.

"Carter" starts off with a man waking up with amnesia. He doesn't even know his name. He's surrounded  by CIA agents, and a voice in his earpiece is giving him instructions. An explosion from boobytrapped phone kills the agents. Then he enters another building, where he's attacked by more than a hundred people, too many for me to count. But he fights and defeats all of them. He might have forgotten who he is, but he hasn't forgotten how to fight.

Is this Jason Bourne all over again? The secret agent with amnesia story has been overdone. I groaned when the film started.

We're slowly filled in on the background. The man's name is Carter Lee. A virus has developed in Korea, both sides of the North-South border, which makes the people who contract it die within a week. Before they die they lose their intelligence and become very aggressive, attacking (and infecting) others at random. It's similar to a zombie apocalypse, except the infected don't look ugly. Dr. Jung, a North Korean scientist, has cured his daughter, Ha-Na. Her body now contains the only antidote. Ha-Na has been kidnapped by the CIA, and Carter has been assigned to free her and return her to North Korea. His amnesia has been artificially induced to help him go undetected.

I have mixed feelings about the film. I greatly enjoyed the action sequences, but I wish there had been a better plot. There's a lot of fighting, with fists and guns, throughout the film. The closest comparison is the John Wick films, except John Wick doesn't have amnesia. I felt disappointed whenever the fighting stopped. No attempt is made to develop the characters. We're told who they are, but they're wooden figures and we have no feeling for them.

The film ends on a cliff-hanger, suggesting a sequel. I shan't watch it.