The Numbers Station

I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by The Numbers Station. Going on John Cusack's recent venture into silly, inconsequential direct to video thrillers without depth or heft, I expected a mind numbing cash grab with his moniker shamelessly plastered in pre title billing. I only watched it for a couple of actors I really enjoy, and what I got was thoroughly fun, slow burning spy thriller that took its time, built the characters and focused on mood and story instead of just action filler. During and after the Cold War, Numerous 'Numbers Stations' were planted all over Europe, facilities where operatives would reside, broadcasting codes in the form of random sequences of digits, all over the region to various agents, who would read them, and carry out the orders embedded within. Cusack's plays a disgraced agent who is assigned to accompany a coder (Malin Ackerman) to a remote station, and protect her and the premises. They arrive and are immediately at odds with each other. Ackerman is a rookie spook with idealistic values and a sunshiny demeanour that irks Cusack right off the bat. He has acres of tragedy behind him, curdling his personality into a jaded, hangdog presence, essentially just wearily carrying out the motions with listless resignation. The script wisely gives them time to bicker about their differences, learn a bit about each other and form a shaky bond before the inevitable conflict rears its head, in the form of a rogue special ops unit led by a determined psychopath (Richard Brake). Their aim is to hijack the numbers stations broadcasting capabilities and send out codes of their own containing orders to do God knows what. It's up to Cusack to prevent this, giving him new purpose. The underrated Liam Cunningham briefly shows up as Cusack's morally bankrupt partner who ends up having a crisis of conscience, and portrays it really well as only Cunnningham can do. It's not a movie to rave about, but it's a solid, moody thriller for lovers of the genre, perfect for a lazy rainy night.

i enjoyed it! the story was pretty well told. the background of John Cusack's character was well revealed, so we can better understand his motives and feelings during the unfolding action, the female character was somewhat underdeveloped i think, not that it impacts the story much, but we could have gotten some flashbacks on how she ended up in the station as well, not only in words - but thats all minor mumblings although it may seem to some as a 'B' rated movie - it is a much, much better than that, you can easily tell that much effort has been put in this movie by a serious team 7/10

It's no master piece, but it is way better than it's current score (atm 5.6). This is a classic action movie somewhere in the middle of an unholy "bond", "die hard" and "taken" trinity. Malin Åkerman makes an impressive acting performance in every way, incluing an extremely convincing "being knocked out"-scene. She kills her role in every way possible and this role should never be held agains her in any way. The story is much deeper than first portrayed and makes you feel for the protagonist, even before there is a dilemma portrayed. Once the dilemma is in place, the story goes on in a well paced manor but without any big surprises. To keep it short, this movie is really enjoyable but you might be able to guess the outcome even after 10 minutes of runtime. 8/10

First off, the low viewer ratings is deceptive, this movie is actually better than average, entertaining, with a plot line that isn't original, but unique in a sense that it involves an archaic spy communication medium not known to the general public. John Cusack is such a superb actor and his acting abilities brought this movie up a notch. B+ and 7 outta 10, enjoyable movie.