12 Recent Films That Fell Apart In The Final Act

It's always interesting when one can pinpoint the exact moment a film fell apart. In The Rhythm Section - in which Stephanie (Blake Lively) trains with disgraced MI6 agent Iain Boyd (Jude Law) in order to become an assassin and kill the terrorist who killed her family in a plane crash - this comes around the beginning of the third act.

After a hit goes wrong, Boyd kills Stephanie's target instead and unintentionally kills a couple of children. Horrified by this and by Boyd's relative lack of remorse, Stephanie ditches him and goes to stay with their ex-CIA contact Marcus Serra (Sterling K Brown). Lively and Law were a very good double act in the film and it definitely suffers from moving away from them but worse still, the rest of the final act is bland as all hell.

The rest of the film offered some really cool set-pieces but there's none of that here. The film also represents a sad example of one of the very worst trends in current Hollywood cinema: the twist villain.

In a pointless, predictable and jarringly dumb ending Marcus Serra is revealed to the terrorist Stephanie was looking for. It's the cherry on top of a thoroughly unappetizing cake, a dissatisfying ending to a film that was actually doing pretty well in the first two thirds.