12 Dire Plot Twists From Recent Hollywood Films
5. Sterling K. Brown Did It - The Rhythm Section
In this spy thriller, Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively) trains with a former MI6 operative Iain Boyd (Jude Law) in order to get revenge on the people behind the plane bombing that killed her family. Former CIA agent turned information broker Marc Serra (Sterling K. Brown) also helps them out.
After a hit goes wrong, Patrick ditches Boyd and stays with Serra as she continues to hunt for the terrorist known only as U-17, who masterminded the plane bombing. Serra eventually tells her that he believes Reza, a young bombmaker, is actually U-17.
As soon as he said this (Reza obviously isn't U-17) it's likely that most immediately guessed that Serra was U-17 and then spent the film's final act with their fingers crossed that the film wouldn't drop this Awful twist-ending on us. Alas, it proceeded with this twist.
Not only was this reveal blindingly obvious but it also added nothing whatsoever to the film and led to an anticlimactic showdown between Stephanie and Serra. Additionally, Serra never seemed like a villain at all and this was impossible to buy.
If Boyd had been U-17, with Serra as a red herring instead, that could've worked. Sadly, this mostly enjoyable movie fatally undermined itself with its generally terrible final act and the twist was the thing which finally broke it.