“Marv” (Ke Huy Quan) is a cheery real estate agent who’s just won an award for his sterling efforts when he receives an unwelcome visitor at his office. “The Raven” (Mustafa Shakir) is a poet, he loves his verse - but he’s also an useful man with his knives too, and after a few minutes we begin to suspect that this meek little estate agent has really got all the ninja skills of “John Wick”. It transpires that he used to be an enforcer for his sibling “Knuckles” (Daniel Wu) who has been mixed up with some Russians and is now worried that “Rose” (Ariana DeBose) has managed to wheedle some information from his missing accountant “Kippy” (Rhys Darby). Now she is supposed to have been killed already, but big brother is sceptical and because “Rose” and “Marv” have some past, it’s going to be down to him to find her before she finds him! The first ten minutes of this are quite good fun as it pokes some fun at the faux-sincerity of the “Glengarrry Glen Ross” brigade but thereafter it all just descends into a rather farcical affair with it’s lightly-comedic and repetitive fight scenes destroying some perfectly good fitted kitchens. Sean Astin features briefly, but to no real purpose as the cat and mouse game vacillates between the two teams and some family menace ensues. DeBose tries hard, for that matter so does Quan, but the story is the stuff of a very weak Jackie Chan affair that rumbles along predictably and without much charm. It’s short, which is a good thing, and it’s not un-watchable, but it’s not good either.
