Operation: Endgame (2010) – Review

Where to watch Operation: Endgame

3 Stars

A man shows up for his first day on the job as a government spy and is taken into a deep underground bunker known as The Factory. Within its walls are housed government documents on everything the Bush administration has done that are guarded by two teams of operatives overseen by The Devil. During the Obama inauguration The Devil is assassinated, the fortress goes into lock-down and sets to self destruct. Now he must find the killer and stop the countdown, or die trying. Given the operative name The Fool (everyone’s named after Tarot cards) the teams begin picking each other off one by one as they search for a way out. Explosions, blood and laughs ensue.

Operation: Endgame is a dry witty dark action comedy that earns its R rating with violence and excessively bad language, it’s the kind of movie only the producers of Donnie Darko and The Devil’s Rejects could bring to light. Screenwriter Sam Levinson’s (based on an earlier script from Brian Watanabe) dialogue is the true star of the film. Once it starts it doesn’t stop, funny with a biting wit and strewn with every imaginable curse word, it hops from one actor’s mouth to another never missing a beat. The plot unfolds more like a horror film, with bloody encounters in the dingy and dark cement complex leading from one twist to another.

The cast is amazing here – Joe Anderson, Rob Corddry, Ellen Barkin, Odette Yustman, Maggie Q, Zach Galifianakis, Adam Scott, Brandon T. Jackson, Emilie de Ravin, Ving Rhames, Bob Odenkirk, Michael Hitchcock, Tim Bagley, Beth Grant and of course “Hey now!” Jeffrey Tambor. It’s a long list, but all worth mentioning as they are in top form throughout the film. Did you ever think a fight sequence between Rob Corddry and Adam Scott would be worth a damn? It is! A lot of these guys aren’t new to comedy either, which doesn’t hurt Operation: Endgame in the laugh department.

Overall director Fouad Mikati has created something that we rarely get to see, a working dark action comedy. More often than not these fall flat in one area or another. I can safely say that Operation: Endgame is worth checking out, if you can stomach a hard R flick in this genre.

Director: Fouad Mikati
Stars: Joe Anderson, Rob Corddry, Odette Yustman