Good story, great directing, decent action, perfect length and pace, adequate humor - most of the time, and mainly good acting, although Bautsita should have shown better combat fighting instead of sorrowful sighs when getting hit. And the chicken and life story conversation with Brosnan whilst his daughter was caught was a little lame. A fun lazy-day watch nevertheless. It's a 7/10 from me.

Once upon a time, cinema was awash with DIE HARD rip-offs, but the genre has died out recently. FINAL SCORE, a British thriller set almost entirely in a football stadium, attempts to hark back to the glory days of yesteryear, offering a riff on the Van Damme flick SUDDEN DEATH (itself a blatant DIE HARD copy) while copying various bits and pieces - and even dialogue - from the Bruce Willis classic. The hulking Dave Bautista plays the uncle of a teenage girl who gets drawn into a stand-off at a football match carried out by Russian separatist and all-round bad guy, Ray Stevenson (possibly the only guy to match Bautista in height if not bulk). What follows is paper-thin and cliched, with sometimes awful dialogue, but it works - at least in part. As an action lover I can report that the early fights in the lift and the kitchen are the highlights here, the latter gloriously sadistic and violent, but this is a film that peaks early. Later on, with stunts and motorbike chases, it all gets a little too generic and Hollywood lite, but still held together with a fast pace and no-nonsense approach. A minor film, for sure, but a fun one with it.

17 years earlier, the Belav brothers led a failed bloody revolt in the Russian state of Sakovya. In present day London, former US soldier Michael Knox (Dave Bautista) visits his niece Danni. He still feels responsible for the mission which killed his brother and Danni's father. Like all Americans, he hates soccer but reluctantly follows Danni to a West Ham game. Unbeknownst to the crowd, Arkady Belav (Ray Stevenson) leads a group of terrorists and takes over the stadium. He's searching for his brother Dimitri (Pierce Brosnan) among the crowd who was thought killed in the revolt.

I would definitely drop most of the exposition on the fake Russian revolt. I don't understand using the name Sakovya which sounds like an Avenger movie which isn't helped by Bautista's presence. Just call them Chechens. Unlike Die Hard, the motivation is a bit screwy. One of the great things about Die Hard is that it's smart writing. This movie lacks the smart knowing writing of its better compatriots. Bautista is great in the role and great as a simple muscled hero character. Faisal Khan is the comedic sidekick and has a couple of funny scenes. His best is probably his solution to clearing out the stands. This follows the traditions of those 90s action flicks and gets enough of it right to be passable.