Doug Liman marries his former indie sensibilities to his contemporary action heart in The Wall, a surprisingly compelling one-man show for the British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Taylor-Johnson and John Cena are waiting out a sniper in Iraq, even though president Bush has just declared victory for the US. The sniper picks off Cena early on—live status TBC—leaving his partner to hide behind a small chunk of wall, a former school, with a blown-out knee, no water and no connection to his unit. We never see the shooter (voiced by Laith Nakli), a famous Iraqi killer who hacks into the American’s radio. Despite its desert setting, the film it most evokes is last year’s shark thriller The Shallows, which pits Blake Lively against a deadly enemy in a single location with few resources. It’s a taut 90 minutes and not a single one is wasted.
This article appears in May 4-10, 2017.