Andy Summers 🤠’s review published on Letterboxd:
When your career starts off with a BAFTA Award win, it's usually downhill from there unless the right mix of blockbuster and indie roles present themselves. Jamie Bell came to prominence with his starring turn in Billy Elliott, before a variety of roles in the likes of King Kong, Defiance, and my own personal favourite, Hallam Foe, cast him as just another jobbing British actor dipping in and out of Hollywood with varying degrees of success. He also managed to bag a couple of fine fillies while forging that career across the water, Evan Rachel Wood for a couple of years, and new wife Kate Mara, have been Bell's other prizes in a somewhat stop/start career that brings us up to date with his latest film, 6 Days.
Anyone of a certain age can remember the Iranian Embassy Siege back in 1980. It was the first time we had really seen the SAS go into action on home soil, Television cameras had been covering the events for its duration, and although the specifics of what the terrorists actually wanted changed from day to day, the release of the hostages became the priority for a government who'd come to power less than a year previously. This re-enactment sees Bell as SAS Lance Corporal Rusty Firmin, the team leader, in a film that struggles with poor casting and a plodding plot that doesn't convey the danger and tension of a situation that ended up costing the lives of one hostage and all but one of the terrorists. Mark Strong does his bit pretty well, he always delivers, but Abbie Cornish is truly awful as BBC reporter Kate Adie, in what was a terrible casting choice, her English accent about as convincing as my Iranian one, and unfortunately this looks like a cheap television movie of the week. Martin Shaw gets about three lines of dialogue here, and the terrorists are thinly-drawn stereotypical villains lacking in authenticity amid a rather dull film that doesn't engage in the slightest.