Security (2017)

Directed by: Alain Desrochers | 88 minutes | action, crime, thriller | Actors: Antonio Banderas, Ben Kingsley, Liam McIntyre, Cung Le, Katherine de la Rocha, Chad Lindberg, Jiro Wang, Gabriella Wright, Shari Watson, John Strong, Andrew De La Rocha

In the 1990s, Antonio Banderas was a huge star. The Latin Lover, who gained a foothold in Hollywood in the early 1990s through an intensive and fruitful collaboration with director Pedro Almodóvar from Malaga in southern Spain, shone at the time in ‘Philadelphia’ (1993), ‘Evita ‘ (1996) and ‘The Mask of Zorro’ (1998). Then came a time when he was mainly in the magazines because of his stormy marriage to Melanie Griffith, with whom he had daughter Stella. In the twenty-first century he achieved his greatest commercial successes, but then without himself being seen in the picture. He actually spoke the voice of the character Puss (in Boots) in the films ‘Shrek 2’ (2004), ‘Shrek The Third’ (2007) and ‘Shrek Forever After’ (2010) and earned his own spin-off. : ‘Puss in Boots’ (2011). “I hate that cat,” Banderas once said jokingly in an interview. “Since he’s in my life, I’m not important anymore. Where women used to say ‘I loved you in ‘The Mask of Zorro’, now it’s all about how much they like that cat.”

Banderas still makes many films, but their quality varies greatly. Most don’t even make it to theaters and are released straight to DVD/Bluray. Such as ‘Security’ (2017), a low-budget action thriller like Banderas has made before. In this film, the Spanish actor plays Eduardo ‘Eddie’ Deacon, a war veteran desperately trying to get his life back on track. Once an important captain with a lot of power and prestige, now he has to beg for a job at an employment agency. He is willing to take anything, no matter how poorly it pays and no matter how meager the working conditions are. After some insistence, there appears to be a job for him, as a security guard at a shopping center forty kilometers away. He can start that same evening. The team he ends up in is a mixed bag of irregulars. Executive Vance (Liam McIntyre) is an annoying chatterbox who takes care of fear monger Mason (Chad Lindberg), good-for-nothing Johnny (Jiro Wang) and hungover Ruby (Gabriella Wright). Eddie is the only one who takes the work seriously, although he is going a bit too far in his approach.

What no one could have suspected is that Eddie’s military skills present themselves at just the right time. A young girl (Katherine de la Rocha) bangs on the mall door in a panic. She is being chased, she says, if she can come and hide with Eddie and his colleagues. Vance turns her off at first, but the deadly serious Eddie sees that it is serious and takes over from that moment on. Not much later Charlie (Ben Kingsley) stands in front of the same door. He claims to be the girl’s father. In reality, however, he is the leader of an aggressively operating criminal organization that is determined to get rid of the girl, since she is the only one who can testify against him. Eddie and his colleagues have the arduous task of protecting the girl from her assailants.

‘Security’ is a modest action film that approaches its wafer-thin plot straightforward. It doesn’t get too hot – ‘Security’ lasts only 86 minutes – and the film doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. The sole aim of Canadian director Alain Desrochers and screenwriters Tony Mosher and John Sullivan is simple entertainment, without too much fuss. With limited resources and a not too complicated plot, they succeed very nicely. Of course, the credibility is taken for granted and you will have forgotten this film immediately after the credits. But if you don’t have too high expectations, you can expect an entertaining one and a half hours. With Banderas and certainly Kingsley – a man with a very impressive trophy cabinet – we have two actors who have much more to offer than they show here, but everything shows that the gentlemen have made this film with a lot of fun. And having fun in your work, that’s worth something too.

It’s amazing how Banderas in particular manages to make a barely developed character fascinating; we are interested in his Eddie Deacon; what happened to him, what has he been through, who is he? Unfortunately, we hardly get any answers; this is not the movie for that. ‘Security’ is pure one-dimensional entertainment, and there’s nothing wrong with that from time to time.