The P.H. Metric 61/100
The Foreigner rings out in the same way a nostalgia flick does, let us take something that was more cutesy and lovable and make it gritty, then get applauded for the dark tones of something that is almost the same as the cutesy original version.
Directing: 5/10
Now the marketing is going to sell you on this is the director that made that gritty reboot to the Bond series (pattern?), but this is also a director that has averaged borderline ok to pure trash for almost every film he has made for the last 18 years, so if they are going to tout the good, remember the bad as well. The Foreigner is plain, nothing special, nothing amazing, average work from an increasingly average director. The camera work reeks of status quo and scenes as well as their shots play like the project was being rushed and not given any true forethought.
Acting: 5/10
Brosnan and Chan acting powerhouses, they are not, but Chan is cast in a similar light as Jet Li in Danny the Dog, do not let him say much and get him to look brooding, but in terms of acting there is very little to display. Brosnan has to carry 90% of the acting in the film and while he makes a go of it, his talent is not quite there to be able to pull it off. Aside from these two, a series of increasingly wooden people try to make their arguments heard, but are nearly pointless in the cause.
Cinematography: 7/10
Tattersall’s cinematography is above average but not his best work to date and the fight scenes were shot in a such away that it felt like you could see Chan get dragged by the invisible rope every time he did a double drop kick.
Editing 7/10
Catanzaro finally gets to step from out of the world of television and edit her first real film, (Smoking Aces 2 does not count) it was not a horrible first outing and with a couple steps into tightening up the pace of certain shots and phasing out some action that causes the quality of the film to go down, she could see her star rise higher.
Score: 7/10
The sound crew did not let the film down and those pulsing tones, are felt hard and they are felt fast. One or two miscues drops the score a bit but overall decent job.
Visual Effects: 6/10
I feel mean giving the visual department such a low score, I know they can only provide what is scripted and asked of them and in this case I am sure they could have provided more if they were pushed, but the effects felting underwhelming.
Writing: 3/10
“OK did we make our protagonist sympathetic?”
“Not really.”
“But it is Jackie Chan, did we at least make it seem like the system was screwing him over?”
“Not really, we gave him a stalkerish vibe and showed no ineptness by the police or the Counter terrorism people.”
“Great, did we at least make it cohesive with plot-holes.”
“Well we turned all 500 plot-holes into one big plot-hole.”
“Perfect, sounds like we can knock off early.”
Production Design: 7/10
Production design was probably the highest ranking factor in the film and good on them, but that generally should never be the case.
Costume Design 7/10
Very limited, for a good portion of the film every one is dressed in black and there happens to be a couple of issues with Jackie’s outfit.
Make-up/Hairstyle 7/10
Limited, though the work on Jackie was well-done, though the question of what is natural and what is not does pop up, but still decent job.
The Reviews 