MI-5 (2015)

When a terrorist escapes custody during a routine handover, Will Holloway must team with disgraced MI5 Intelligence Chief Harry Pearce to track him down before an imminent terrorist attack on London.

Storyline

MI5 personnel are caught up in a traffic jam in London while escorting the CIA's most wanted terrorist to an arranged CIA handover point, when he is suddenly rescued by armed men on motorbikes. Harry Pearce, the head of Counter-Terrorism at MI5 is blamed for the terrorist escaping. Especially as Harry disappeared shortly after the incident. An ex-agent, Will Holloway, and protégé of Harry's is recalled by MI5 to assist in finding and bringing Harry in. However Harry has disappeared for a reason. Certain that there is a traitor in a senior position in MI5, he enlists the somewhat reluctant Will to help him in uncovering the rat or rats concerned.

User Reviews

 Review: I'm really in two minds about this film because I was intrigued about who was the traitor working for the opposite side and I did wonder how they were going to take the terrorist down, so I never lost interest throughout the film. It did feel more like a TV movie than a film for the big screen but it's well put together and the attention to detail in the script was quite good. This complex storyline is about a "Most Wanted" American terrorist leader, Adam Qasim (Elyes Gabel), who escapes from MI5 custody during a routine handover. Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) is the leader of the operation and when Qasim escapes from there custody, he's decommissioned from MI5 and he goes underground to find the dangerous terrorist who plans to bomb various locations in London. He puts his trust in former agent Will Holloway (Kit Harrington) to find the traitor within MI5, who helped Qasim to escape but Will doesn't know if he can trust Harry because his father died during an operation with him. As the story unfolds, Will starts to believe Harry's information but he puts all his efforts into stopping Qasim while Harry is out to expose the traitor. Harry is also being hunted down by MI5 because he has gone rogue, so they try and use Will to bring him into custody but Harry is always 2 steps ahead. With all this going on, they still have to stop Qasim causing havoc in London so there is enough elements going on, which kept this movie interesting throughout. I'm not one that watched any episodes of the series so I didn't know what to expect. I personally wouldn't have used Kit Harrington to play the lead because he lacks emotion and he didn't really have intense screen charisma like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. With that aside, it's full of intense drama and I'm sure that the people who liked the series, won't be disappointed. I personally just found it mediocre but that's not to say that it isn't watchable. Average!

Round-Up: This movie was directed by Bharat Nalluri who brought you films like Crow: Salvation and Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day. He also directed 3 episodes of Hustle, 2 episodes of Life On Mars, 1 episode of Torchwood and 6 episodes of Spooks, so he had first hand experience of the series. I think he put together a decent movie and it was good to see that he used some of the original cast. He obviously chose Kit Harington for the lead because he has become popular since his role as Jon Snow in the Game Of Thrones franchise but I would have taken a gamble with a fresh new face. For his first major release, he must be happy with the reception that the movie received and I'm looking forward to seeing what they will do with other movies for this franchise.