INTERCEPTOR ★★★½
(MA 15+) 96 minutes
Limited theatrical release and Netflix

You have to hand it to director Matthew Reilly. There is nothing he thinks he can’t do.

He famously self-published his first action adventure novel in 1996, after every publisher in Australia rejected it. He was 19. His books have now sold north of 7.5 million copies. Hollywood has bought, but not yet made, several of his books.

He wrote this one with the aim of keeping it low budget, so he could direct it himself. He wants to join the big time and play with the big toys in Hollywood, where he now lives. He makes his debut here, with the more experienced Stuart Beattie co-writing the script.

Parts of it are laughably silly, but that’s intentional. It’s not quite a satire, having some Serious Things to say, but mostly it’s a romp. A high-energy, breathless, American-market action thriller with up-to-date politics, an appealing lead character in Spanish-born Elsa Pataky, a very tight structure and more narrative drive than the DeLorean that Reilly is said to own.

First, the things it doesn’t do well: exposition, dialogue, a logical plot. The characters tell us what is going on, rather than showing us. So when a long-range helicopter arrives at the floating missile station, some way out into the Pacific, the pilot tells the guys on the ground that he has ‘your new missile expert’ on board. As if.

Pataky strides from the chopper, straining at her uniform, and within minutes, she is in the thick of a full-scale terrorist attack.

The bad guys have taken out one of only two sites that can launch the Interceptor missiles that guard America. Worse, 16 nukes have been stolen in Russia.

Captain JJ Collins (Pataky) must defend the launch platform against a determined assault, led by a rebel US soldier Alexander Kessell (Luke Bracey), a rich boy gone bad. He hates his own culture, which allows him to bang on about the death of America.