A story centered on a mysterious British Muslim man (Dev Patel) on his journey across Pakistan and India.

You would be wrong to think, like me, that you are walking into a fun Bollywood or romantic movie with a title like The Wedding Guest, however, Michael Winterbottom’s latest flick is a hostage-thriller set in South Asia, one that is mostly meh and little thrill. In The Wedding Guest (2018), Dev Patel, playing Jay the merciful mercenary, is on his way to a wedding, but he is definitely not invited.

The movie opens with a long stretch of non-dialogue as we are introduced to Dev Patel’s character, packing at his home base in the UK for what seems to be a long trip; all of the usual necessities: socks, dress clothes, and a stack of fake passports. As he makes his way to his first destination, he rents a series of cars along the way and we get the sense that he is setting up for something to go down. One night soon after arriving, he cooly and calmly prepares for his deed – the kidnapping of a Pakistani bride from what seems to be a powerful family on the eve of the wedding. His plan would have gone off without a hitch were it not for a persistent guard whose death draws media attention to her disappearance. To make matters worse, his benefactor, Deepesh (Jim Sarbh), who hired him to kidnap his love, Samira (Radhika Apte), and bring her to him, no longer wants to go through with life on the run with her and directs him to take her back. As the stakes are raised so does the price for his services, however, he gets more than what he bargained for when the alluring Samira raises his hopes for companionship to lower his guard.

With pop movies like Taken and modern-classic kidnapping movies like The Transporter or Prisoners, this paint-by-numbers hostage feature is nothing to write home about and was a rather disappointing addition to this genre of film. Though the performances were great from its two stars, the narrative itself is unexciting. There is at least, in retrospect, a bit of a feminist message as the movie delicately touches on the matter of arranged marriages. However, the movie is essentially about identity, or rather lack thereof, as the characters never truly know each other, and the audience never truly knows each character’s intention – this did create some tension within the story, but the film changing locations so much felt like Winterbottom was relying too heavily on those movements to push the story along, rather than any substance or background.

Winterbottom is no stranger to capturing the romance of destinations, as his movie The Trip perfectly displays. Though I was not sold on this particular story, Winterbottom used the urban sprawl of India beautifully as a backdrop for the two stars, Dev Patel and Radhika Apte, to trek across the country towards their final destination. Aerial shots of the vast cities as well as using the bustling markets of New Dehli, Mumbai, Goa, and parts of Pakistan add texture and creates an organic framework for the film. Besides the setting, The Wedding Guest also saves itself by being very well cast; although the romantic chemistry is decidedly on the lowest setting of heat possible between the fabulous miss Apte of Netflix’s Ghoul fame and the evermore handsome Mr. Patel, they did a lot of acting without dialogue and built weighted moments together (sometimes) that helped to drive along the clunker of a script. Overall though, it just felt like another notch in the kidnapper or guy-with-a-gun trend that has seemed to capture moviegoers hearts since Taken reinvigorated it.

A bearded, strong Dev Patel as the hired man with the gun sounds like a winner – it is nice to see his development from the lanky teen in Slumdog Millionaire into full-blown leading man roles. For a movie like this to be good, you need either a ton of energy and speed, a lot of emotion and drama, or ideally a healthy mix of all of the above. Though this was definitely not a bad movie, it is indeed watchable, The Wedding Guest felt cold on delivery and needed a lot more action. Taken at least has cheesy quotes to take away from the experience, but I take away nothing from this movie and I found myself fidgeting in my seat quite a bit from disinterest. Despite the look of the movie and Dev looking fine af, I do not recommend RSVP’ing to Michael Winterbottom’s The Wedding Guest unless there is nothing else to watch. And there usually is.