Who gave this the green light??

Rating: 5/10 (27 December 2015)

This is an 8/10 film dragged down to a 5/10 by the inclusion of Emily Blunt's "character" in the screenplay.
I have no understanding whatsoever what the execs/director/writer were thinking when including her whiny-ass, *unbelievably* naïve character in this otherwise really good film but boy did they trash it by her inclusion.
Notwithstanding the amount of disbelief suspension required to think she could ever be a FBI/SWAT team member (never mind leader!!) with her 90lbs frame but she goes one further by doing things like checking a dead guy for a pulse with her leather gloves still on (two minutes into the film!) just to ensure that your jaw slacks open at the seeming incongruousness of all the good things you've heard about this film vs her character (stick thin female/pointless and distracting character) contributing absolutely nothing to it and she's in your face throughout the film - mindboggling ...
Take her out of it and add a few more minutes with the rest of the cast and you're onto a winner cos the rest of it is just great, cinematography and direction in particular but well, I don't know what else to say ...
I'm not hating on Blunt cos her performance is fine but she should never have made it past the first draft of this write-up; there's just zero interest here in her character and you just have to think that it's just yet another example of Hollywood's obsession with squeezing in a female character (almost always to the detriment of everything else) to satisfy the focus groups/wtf-ever but that's usually a token "supporting" (LOL!) character, not the ostensible lead in a film ...
This is a film that should never have had a lead cos the story *is* the lead - Blunt appears to have been tacked on as an afterthought and ultimately it trashes what could have been a well made film with a great cast ...
A real shame and yet more evidence of some staggeringly inept writing decisions coming out of Hollywood these days ...