‘I fucking hate snipers,” says a meathead mercenary after finally laying hands on Scott Adkins’ marksman and using him to dust down an elevator. It’s hard not to have some sympathy, after the lengthy preamble of boorish buddy banter between jaded shooter Sam (Adkins) and his brash spotter Ken (Jack Parr) in this clunky huit clos action movie directed by longtime stuntman Nick McKinless. Their knucklehead repartee makes Fast & Furious look like Gilbert and Sullivan; clearly these are two guys who have spent too much time in each other’s company.
A veteran for some shadowy agency who handles government-approved assassinations, Sam loses his mojo after accidentally wounding a bystander. So he chooses to quit, but fails to observe long-established movie wisdom about never accepting One Last Job. Their plummy-voiced handler Tamara (Alice Eve) puts them up in a luxury hotel, and to Ken’s delight, sweetens the deal with a couple of Slavic sex workers (Madalina Bellariu Ion and Alba de Torrebruna). But Ken spots a flash in the window of a nearby skyscraper, and the four of them find themselves in the crosshairs.
After a fair dollop of comedy on his slate in the last few years, this dour, downbeat performance could herald Adkins entering his Chuck Norris phase. He is a capable actor, but this cliche-heavy stodge does him no favours. McKinless and scriptwriter Joshua James try to cover all the angles, from sassy bromance to sniper philosophising to ruminations on government abuse of power, but barely any of it registers.
Nor is Take Cover astute enough to methodically work the stripped-down predicament for everything it’s worth. Surely no elite sniper would give his position away with a lens flash, for starters – and why are the characters all hiding behind furniture that is presumably easy to penetrate with high velocity bullets? With the pivotal twist also horribly visible, all that’s left is a handful of standard-issue pummellings that don’t really stretch Adkins’ skills. The recent Night of the Hunted is a much more satisfying bet for a straight-to-streaming sniper ordeal.