The Fix

There are a lot of movies that come out each year. In the U.S., that number is around 700 to 1,000. Add the rest of the world, and you’re talking somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 a year. I watch a lot of them, but even then, I only see around 4 to 5% of the movies released in a given year. Somehow, that still tells me I might need to go outside more. I bring this up because sometimes a movie seems to drop out of nowhere, sometimes with a few familiar faces in the cast. Guy Moshe’s new film, The Fix, felt like that to me. While it might not have the fix for everything, it delivers an entertaining, if uneven, thriller.

Tucker (Zachary Levi) and his team work for the CIA. In the final days before the U.S. military leaves Afghanistan, they are tasked with rescuing a former informant. Leading them is Larry (Liam Neeson), who knows he can count on Tucker’s team to get the job done. Things don’t go exactly as planned, but the mission is a success, even if their actions come with consequences.

A few years later, Tucker has been discharged from the military and visits Larry, who appears to have Alzheimer’s. Larry mistakes Tucker for someone he worked with in Iran around 1979 and lets some information slip. Tucker does a little digging and discovers that twenty-five million dollars is hidden behind a wall in a hotel, just waiting for someone to take it. Naturally, he gets the team back together. In exchange for the money’s exact location, he agrees to bring someone’s daughter home, adding another complication to a mission that already puts them in danger in Iran. Behind enemy lines, there’s plenty that can go wrong, and Tucker and his team may have bitten off more than they can chew.

Written by Mark Bacci, Ron Hutchinson, and Guy Moshe, with Moshe also directing, The Fix feels like an action movie dealing with the aftermath of the War on Terror. This is a story about driven men, and while there are a few gunfights, it leans more on threats and long stares than all-out action. Moshe is at his best when capturing the chaos of battle and the attitudes of the soldiers caught up in it. Some editing and story choices, though, keep The Fix from being as good as it could have been.

The Fix likes to take its time doing, well, pretty much anything. I walked away feeling like there was a better two-hour movie somewhere inside the nearly two-and-a-half-hour version we got. The third act has too many endings, and a romantic subplot feels completely unnecessary. Trimming those alone could have helped things move along.

As for the cast, Neeson is barely in it, but Levi does solid work. He embraces the physical side of the role and is surprisingly effective in both the emotional moments and the action scenes. There are some thrills along the way as The Fix mixes historical fact with fictional storytelling, but it never quite gets past how bloated it feels. By the final act, the absurdity starts taking over, too.

There’s enough here that I liked, but I also know how precious time is to most people. With The Fix, time isn’t on the film’s side—or the audience’s.

Brian Taylor

Member of the North Texas Film Critics Association, and lover of all things Cinema