CHIEF OF STATION (2024) - Movie Review

Director: Jesse V. Johnson
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Olga Kurylenko, Alex Pettyfer
Genre: Action, Thriller
Writer: George Mahaffey
Runtime: 97 min
Rated: Not Rated
Buy This Movie: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV

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Synopsis:

Aaron Eckhart stars as Ben, a former CIA European Station Chief whose world comes crumbling down after his wife Biana (Bleona), a former operative, dies in a terrible accident. After receiving cryptic intel that his wife’s death might not have been an accident, Ben heads back into the shadowy underworld of Eastern Europe, teaming up with a former adversary to unravel a conspiracy that challenges everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the agency he worked at for more than 20 years.

Review:

"Chief of Station" is probably one of the most generic and dull spy thrillers I've watched in a long time. Directed by stuntman-turned-director Jesse V. Johnson, the film finds Aaron Eckhart in another one of these poorly conceived and executed "straight-to-video" flicks, but unlike "The Bricklayer", which looked at least half-competent, this one is as forgettable as it gets.

The plot revolves around Eckhart's retired CIA Station Chief working out a conspiracy that may have also involved his wife's death. As he scours the espionage underworld we uncover the movie's predictable intrigue, which won't make much sense if you think too much about it, and a host of bland, cliched characters.

Eckhart is game, as always, doing his best with whatever he could get out of the poorly written character. Same goes for Olga Kurylenko, who shows up past the halfway mark. Pettyfer's character turns out to be important to the plot, but literally any other actor could have played him.

The film's worst performance belongs to Nick Moran as FSB agent Evgeny Khalikov, who does what is probably the worst Russian accent I've ever heard in a movie. The character is also really strange, and would be more at home in a "Naked Gun" spoof. In fact, much of this movie borders on self-parody, and I don't think it was intentional.

The action is also pretty unexciting, with only a couple of fights between long drawn-out scenes of people talking, and a lengthy car chase towards the end. Nothing really stands out as impressive, except maybe a brief brawl between Eckhart and Daniel Bernhardt. The movie's Budapest location should have helped give the film an interesting look, but they somehow made it look like any generic European city.

"Chief of Station" is just another run-of-the-mill potboiler. There are far better movies out there and you can definitely give this one a miss.

SCORE: 4/10