Renny Harlin’s The Bricklayer

Greece is situated smack dab in the middle of a sensitive geographic area, with easy access to the Balkans and Turkey. It also has a history of a particularly childish strain of leftism. (Remember their threats to leave the Eurozone, because they were shocked to learn they had to balance their budgets once they relinquished control of their monetary policy? Any econ major could have told them so.) That makes Greece the perfect location for a scheme to discredit the CIA in Renny Harlin’s The Bricklayer, which releases this Friday in theaters and on-demand.

Things got a bit messy while Steve Vail was assigned to Greece, so he resigned from the agency, returning to his blue-collar roots laying brick for construction sites. Unfortunately, Radek, the contact he supposedly liquidated, is alive and well, framing the CIA for the assassinations of leftist “journalists” with a history of investigating Agency operations. Ostensibly, he is extorting the CIA for 100 million in Bitcoin, but his vendetta runs deeper than that. Regardless, Kostas, a demagogic leftwing Greek politician is shamelessly exploiting the killings to undermine America and NATO.

Reluctantly, Vail secretly returns to Greece, along with Kate Bannon, a Jack Ryan-esque analyst, who gets her first field assignment, because her politically astute boss O’Malley wants to limit the circle of agency personnel with knowledge of the affair. Initially, the by-the-book Bannon clashes with the rogue Vail, but after they save each other’s necks a few times, they hash out a degree of mutual trust.

Hanna Weg and Matt Johnson’s adaptation of Paul Lindsay’s novel (written under the name Noah Boyd) has a sophisticated premise that is shrewdly realistic and incredibly timely. Unfortunately, their screenplay emphasizes routine action over international intrigue. Harlin was always an action-oriented filmmaker, so this plays to his strengths, but it is a missed opportunity for something smarter.

Still, Aaron Eckhart and Nina Dobrev develop a relatively nice non-romantic rapport as Vail and Bannon. Tim Blake Nelson is also entertainingly sleazy as O’Malley. Unfortunately, Clifton Collins Jr. is not sufficiently sinister or nefarious to be a worthy evil mastermind.

The Thessaloniki backdrop is both visually effective and geopolitically apt. Eckhart might be in the straight-to-VOD stage of his career, but he deserves credit for choosing better straight-to-VOD projects, like Muzzle and this film. It has almost as much brains as brawn—almost. It will be interesting as a free streaming choice, but theatrical tickets prices probably exceed its cinematic value when The Bricklayer releases this Friday (1/5) in theaters and on digital.