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Alarum Review
Image Credit: Lionsgate
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Scott Eastwood– Joe Travers
Sylvester Stallone– Chester
Willa Fitzgerald– Laura
Mike Colter– Orlin
D.W. Moffett– Ronald Burbridge
Mark Polish– CIA Agent Kirby
(check out the rest of the cast here)
Directed by Michael Polish
Screenplay by Alexander Vesha
Distributed by Lionsgate
Rated R for strong violence and language
Runtime– 95 minutes
Alarum, directed by Michael Polish and set to hit all major digital and Video On Demand platforms as well as limited theaters starting January 17th, 2025, is a fairly decent low-budget action/spy flick. While it is a bit slow at times, the movie does feature a top notch villain performance from Mike Colter and a shockingly funny performance from Sylvester Stallone, as well as some effective action moments. The end of the movie seems to suggest that everyone involved in the movie’s production would like to make a sequel, which I would be fine with. The world would be a much better place if it had a few low-budget, direct-to-video action movie franchises.
Alarum stars Scott Eastwood as Joe Travers, a badass American spy who hooks up with a German female spy (Laura, as played by Willa Fitzgerald) after being sent to kill her in “Prague” in 2019. As a result of their relationship, Travers goes off the grid and essentially gives up his spy job, which annoys his spy bosses. And while living in the shadows is difficult, Travers and Laura make it work and it seems as though they enjoy their lives. Five years later, while spending time with friends at a resort in “Poland,” Travers and Laura are thrust back into their spy lives when a plane mysteriously crashes in the woods near the resort. While investigating the crash site, Travers finds a flash drive, as well as worrying neck tattoos on the dead plane crew. The tattoos show that the plane crew are somehow connected to Alarum, a notorious international spy group that essentially works against the world’s governments, especially the American government. After finding the flash drive, a band of heavily armed men decked out in black clothing show up. These men, led by Orlin (Mike Colter), threaten to kill Travers and everyone that’s with him (Travers was on a sort of nature hike with people from the resort when the plane crashed). While all of that is happening, Laura, still at the resort hotel, decides to go into protection mode, becoming her friend Roland’s bodyguard (Roland is played by Joel Cohen. No, not that Joel Cohen). Laura changes into her spy outfit (all black clothing, holsters, a gun, and various knives) and prepares to go to war with whomever (at this point she suspects it’s probably Alarum agents but she doesn’t know for sure).
And while all of that is going on, Ronald Burbage (D.W. Moffett), some sort of U.S. spy master operating out of an intelligence gathering “listening station” somewhere in, maybe, Europe, finds out that Travers is alive and in Poland. With the help of Agent Kirby (Mark Polish, the director’s brother), Burbage figures out where, exactly, Travers is in Poland (there’s a whole bunch of stuff here involving the crashed plane being affiliated with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and how that connects to Alarum), and then activates Chester (Sylvester Stallone), an arbiter (which just means assassin). Burbage wants Chester to travel from Slovakia, where Chester is stationed for some reason, to Poland to take out Travers.
So then some stuff happens, a shootout ensues in the woods, Travers kills a bunch of Orlin’s men while trying to escape, Laura kills a bunch of Orlin’s men who show up at the resort, and Chester kills his plane pilot with a super-secret new serum in order to create a distraction for some reason. Travers eventually does manage to get out of the woods and calls Burbage, where he finds out that Chester is in the area (Travers also tells Burbage that he married Laura, which Burbage can’t believe). Travers wants Burbage to call off Chester, which Burbage agrees to but not really. Burbage then calls Chester and tells him to work with Travers for the moment, because of the presence of Alarum and the flash drive. Chester is still going to have to kill Travers at some point, though. Killing Travers is Chester’s main job.
So then some more stuff happens, Travers meets up with Chester, they catch up on one another’s lives while agreeing to help one another take out Alarum and save Laura. During all of this, Chester tries to stick Travers with a syringe filled with the same secret serum he used earlier on the pilot and Travers tries not to fall for whatever bullshit he knows Chester wants to pull (just how is Chester going to try to kill me? Chester does manage to stick Travers during all of this and tells him he only has so long to live). Orlin’s men eventually make their way to the building Travers and Chester are in and another shootout eventually ensues. Will Travers and Chester be able to work together and survive the Alarum onslaught? Will Travers survive before he dies from the serum? And while all of that is going on, will Laura be able to take on and survive the wave after wave of Alarum assassins that have entered the resort?
Alarum does a nice job balancing the story’s action moments and mysterious spy/espionage moments. It would have helped things along, though, if the spy moments matched the energy in the movie’s action moments. The spy moments tend to be a bit dry, as D.W. Moffett’s Burbage and Mark Polish’s Agent Kirby attempt to explain the various spy things through dialogue and interacting with other American intelligence bosses. They don’t really try to explain Alarum, though. Everyone is worried about Alarum, but they don’t spend a lot of time explaining to the audience what Alarum is, which comes off as odd. I mean, the movie does explain that Alarum wants to “tear down the world’s intelligence network,” but why? Does Alarum hate the world, or is it a money thing? Just what the heck is Alarum’s real deal? Maybe they’re saving that for the sequel?
I do know, though, that explaining what Alarum is would have helped with the sequence where Orlin, in full diabolical villain mode, starts killing his own henchmen because they’re not sufficiently vicious. You get the sense in this that Alarum might hire “local” henchmen as opposed to bringing along henchmen who are in Alarum because they believe in what Alarum does. If Alarum does hire local henchmen, what is the draw for going to work for Alarum? Is it money? Is it reputation within the “henchmen” community? If Alarum has an army of true believes at its disposal, Orlin’s killing his own henchmen makes no sense. If they hire local henchmen, Orlin’s violence does make sense. So what the heck is going on here?
The flick’s shootouts are generally well done. Travers and Chester manage to take out loads of Orlin’s henchmen (especially when Chester breaks out the AA-12 shotguns), and most of the gunfire sounds distinct. I will say, though, that Orlin’s henchmen are some of the worst shots I think I’ve ever seen in any sort of action movie. It’s like they’re rejects from the old The A-Team TV show. The movie’s hand-to-hand brawls are pretty brutal. Laura engages in these for the most part and she’s shockingly lethal (Laura also kills multiple henchmen with various knives. She really likes to stab dudes in the neck. In fact, she shows Roland how to kill a man by stabbing one in the neck).
The movie also does a good job with general action movie carnage. Things explode, vehicles crash, planes fall out of the sky, and while it’s all mostly CGI, it looks decent enough. Alarum also features an inordinate amount of head shots, something that you rarely see with this type of movie in this day and age. The last head shot of the movie is pretty weak, though (the moment deserved to be bigger and more impactful considering why the head shot happens). The movie also has a worthwhile soundtrack by Yagmur Kaplan and a nifty opening theme set to an opening titles sequence that someone clearly spent some time on. You just don’t see that kind of thing in any sort of movie anymore.
Scott Eastwood does a great job as Joe Travers. Travers is clearly just a guy that doesn’t want to be a spy anymore and would rather live a quiet life hanging out with his hot babe wife. Travers also doesn’t want to kill anyone anymore. However, as the situation develops, Travers can go back to being a spy and a man-of-action and take out the bad guys. Eastwood has a natural screen charisma and he appears to be having fun playing a spy. Eastwood can also match wits with Stallone and they have tremendous “buddy movie” charisma. I think it would be a blast to see them together in something, either a sequel to Alarum or some other action movie property. I would watch it.
Sylvester Stallone does a fine job as Chester the arbiter/assassin. Chester doesn’t come off as a super badass killer. A lot of that has to do with the way Chester is dressed (the clothes he wears throughout the movie suggest he’s a guy on vacation, not an assassin). Stallone also tries to play Chester as more of a low level goofball, which is unexpected and helps in his scenes with Eastwood’s Travers. Chester killing the pilot is a bit weird (there’s a bit of dialogue where Chester tries to justify his killing of the pilot, which I assume was put into the movie’s screenplay directly by Stallone so Chester wouldn’t be seen as a full on psychopath. I can’t prove that, but it’s just a hunch I have). Chester’s final scene is funnier than it has any right to be. Alarum also continues the fine low-budget, direct-to-video action flick tradition of Stallone being a big hooha action star and listed second in the opening credits (just like Bruce Willis used to be most of the time). So, that’s cool.
Willa Fitzgerald is fantastic as Laura, the former German spy turned wife of Joe Travers. You know that she’s dangerous as soon as the movie starts, but you don’t find out just how dangerous and lethal she is until she puts on her spy clothes and starts stabbing people in the neck. Fitzgerald manages the mysterious aspects of Laura quite well as they don’t come off as ridiculous. Laura does have a tendency to move around dead bodies. Moving dead bodies is one of her main concerns in the movie. She also creates a sort of tent of dead bodies to protect herself from a drone’s machine guns, which is a great way to improvise and adapt to your environment.
Mike Colter is downright diabolical as Orlin, the Alarum representative that will do whatever it takes to achieve his objective. And when I say Orlin will do anything, I mean the guy will do anything. If he’s around, you are not safe. Colter gives Orlin an accent that just enhances his nastiness. Colter doesn’t get to do any big action or fight scenes, which is weird, but he does smoke cigarettes like a machine. I think Colter should do more low-budget action flicks. He has an obvious knack and presence for them.
And D.W. Moffett is hilarious as Ronald Burbage, the head American intelligence official in the movie. I think the best way to describe Burbage is he’s an amoral patriot, in that he will do whatever his country’s leadership needs him to do, but he doesn’t necessarily have a personal moral code that he lives by. You get the sense that if his superiors told him to do something incredibly nasty, like send a drone to a school full of kids and drop of a bomb on the school, Burbage would do it without thinking about it. However, you also get the sense that Burbage didn’t develop this amorality because he’s naturally evil but because he’s just super jaded from doing intelligence work for decades. It’s the job, man. It helps that Moffett is profane and makes you think that, even with Burbage’s amorality, he also probably knows, deep down, how freaking stupid all of this spy stuff is. It’s a complicated part and Moffett excels at it. I also love Burbage’s red, white, and blue mug. It’s somehow wildly inappropriate and spot on at the same time.
Alarum is an engaging low-budget action/spy flick. It sure seems like it plans on having at least one sequel, especially with how the movie ends. And as I said earlier, I would be down for an Alarum sequel. I do wonder, though, if there was an Alarum 2, would it pick up exactly after the ending of Alarum 1, or would it do something else? I guess we’ll find out. I mean, if Alarum is considered a hit, we would get a sequel, right? Isn’t that how it usually works?
See Alarum. See it, see it, see it. Alarum will be available on all major digital and Video On Demand platforms and in limited theaters starting January 17th, 2025.
So what do we have here?
Dead bodies: At least 50.
Explosions: Several, both big and small.
Nudity?: None.
Doobage: Silenced bullet hits into a window. Two guys fighting over a shotgun. Shotgun to the face. Shotgun blast to the face. A hand-to-hand brawl. Two people go flying through a window. Impromptu car roof destruction. A nice opening titles sequence. Makeup and earrings. Off screen sex. Dinner. Airplane hooey. Satellite phone hooey. Hidden bullets. Attempted nature walk. An off screen plane crash. Two very dead pilots. Multiple neck tattoos. A non-descript room. Dead body stabbing. Multiple heavily armed henchmen. Bullet to the head. Assault ripple attack. Dirt bike hooey. Multiple shootouts. Jeep stealing. Attempted jeep driving. Machine gun used as a bat. Dirt bike stealing. An assassination. Snowing. Hardware store hooey. Beef jerky eating. Spy bullshit. A hotel assault. Off screen bad guy killing and then throwing bad guy’s dead body down the stairs. Multiple instances of neck stabbings. An ass kicking. Automatic shotgun hooey. Frag grenade hooey. Face punching. Thump gun hooey. Exploding satellite phone. Machine gun to the face. Gut stabbing. Serious throat slitting. Grenade attack. An impromptu partnership. Multiple intelligence officials complaining about other intelligence agencies. Multiple drone attacks. Exploding drone. Exploding house.
Kim Richards? None.
Gratuitous: “Prague.” Scott Eastwood playing a spy. “Poland.” Scott Eastwood messing around with a knife. Talk of OCD. “Destiny is an old French word.” A satellite phone hidden inside of a hair dryer. An important flash drive. Sylvester Stallone living in “Slovakia.” Willa Fitzgerald smashing a mirror and then making a knife out of the one of the smashed mirror pieces. Willa Fitzgerald explaining how to kill a guy by stabbing him in the neck. Sylvester Stallone getting a ride on a helicopter. Off screen poison injection. A special suitcase that bursts into flames after putting a special code into a keypad. “Yellow Jacket in Poland.” Scott Eastwood breaking into a hardware store and stealing some beef jerky. Cryptic spy dialogue. A red, white, and blue mug. Sylvester Stallone getting excited about drinking vodka. Scott Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone arguing over whether or not it’s a good idea to drink vodka before a shootout. Sylvester Stallone breaking out the AA-12 shotguns. Mike Colter smoking a cigarette. Two henchmen hanging out at the hotel bar. Off screen penis removal. Willa Fitzgerald moving around dead bodies. Sylvester Stallone announcing that he wants to eat pancakes and French toast. Willa Fitzgerald creating a tent of dead bodies to hide under. Book burning. Sylvester Stallone smoking a cigar.
Best lines: “What are you doing after this? No plans.” “Come here. I need help with my necklace.” “How do I look? Like you need to come back to bed.” “I have OCD.” “I do like clean links.” “I was actually raised in Brazil.” “The hell?” “They got shot.” “I don’t want to talk about Chester. Chester is messy.” “We were waiting for the police. There’s no need for the police.” “American stoicism. I admire that quality.” “Call home. All right.” “Why are all of these computers twenty-five years old?” “Was that necessary?” “Okay, here’s what I’m dealing with. I’ve got an ex-arbiter that I think has joined Alarum.” “Someone cut off Yuri’s dick! Someone cut off…! I see that! Someone is trying to intimidate you. It’s working.” “I am what you must fear! The American may offer you death, but I guarantee it!” “What’s Orlin doing? He’s killing his own men. That figures. God, I’m hungry. I don’t know about you but I need some pancakes. Or French toast. Fun food. Something.” “Whoa! Who the fuck worked you over?” “You ever use a frag grenade?” “You Americans think you’re the only well trained killers in the world. I’m German. And I am the best trained killer in the world.” “Yuri was my friend. Who is Yuri?” Who do you work for? I’m not working. I’m on my honeymoon.” “Your application is denied!” “Never trade longevity for bravado.” “I have no interest in intricate strategies. Barbarism works.” “Hello, this is Ronald Burbage with the National Clandestine Service of the United States of America. What is the fucking problem?” “You know, historically, this whole burning books thing didn’t work out for people.” “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get out of this fucking house.”
