Saturday 25 March 2023

REVIEW: The Siege (2023) - Starring Daniel Stisen, Yennis Cheung and Lauren Okadigbo

Review by Jon Donnis
Walker (Daniel Stisen), an international assassin, gets exposed during a mission and is sent to "Reassignment Center 42" to assume a new identity, something he has seemingly done many times before. I am guessing that his identity gets blown quiet often. While staying at the facility, a vicious assault team led by Keates (Samantha Schnitzler), raids the compound in search of a missing person, Juliet (Yennis Cheung) as well as her bodyguard/protector Elda (Lauren Okadigbo), as ordered by their boss. In order to make it through the night, after initially deciding he didn't want to get involved Walker reluctantly teams up with Elda, also a skilled hitwoman, and Juliet.


At about 85 minutes, this is the perfect run time for an action film. Despite this being a relatively low budget film, it is chock full of action scenes and stunts, I was pleasantly surprised, as all the scenes were well shot, and came across believable, even if everyone seemed to have an endless amount of bullets at times.


The film moves along at a decent pace, and although it is far from original, considering the budget, I thought they did a good job. There were no recognisable faces in the cast, which is a shame as it might make it harder to sell the film. Why do you think Bruce Willis gets shoe horned into small parts in so many films!

If this film does well, I could imagine they will knock out some sequels. The Walker character looks great, and is easy to get behind.


The Good
Perfect run time, non stop action, and some light hearted moments spread throughout the film which raised a smile out of this old cynic.

The Bad
The plot is lacking and there are no real back stories to some of the characters which made them hard to care about at times.

Overall
An 85-minute action film, that ticks most of the boxes for me. Is it a classic? No. Could it spawn some more low budget action films? Yes.

I score The Siege a very respectable 7.5/10

At Cinemas now and on digital at https://apple.co/40fAD0c and https://amzn.to/3K6dCqQ