When the Mission Outruns the Story

MOVIE REVIEWS
The Fix
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Genre: Action, Thriller
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 2h 22m
Director: Guy Moshe
Writers: Guy Moshe, Mark Bacci, Ron Hutchinson
Cast: Zachary Levi, Liam Neeson, Quincy Isaiah, Wes Chatham, Jake Choi, Augusto Aguilera, Navid Negahban, Elnaaz Norouzi, Grant Harvey, Lara Wolf, Annet Mahendru, Titus Welliver
Where to Watch: in theaters September 11, 2026

RAVING REVIEW: At 142 minutes, THE FIX has the odd and unexpected problem of feeling both too packed and too underdeveloped where it matters most. Director/co-writer Guy Moshe has assembled a large group of former CIA operators, a failed mission hanging over them, an excursion into Tehran, a rescue operation, histories for all involved, questions of loyalty, and enough moving parts for a much larger espionage story. The movie is rarely lacking something to do, but all that activity doesn’t automatically give the people carrying it enough depth.

Tucker (Zachary Levi) and his former teammates are people marked by what happened during a disastrous operation in Afghanistan, and THE FIX positions their new mission as an opportunity to recover something they lost there. Redemption is every bit as important to the setup as the objective itself, so the film needs us to be invested in these men as more than interchangeable ops with different weapons. Some of that develops, but not enough to justify how much time the movie spends establishing and reorganizing the team.

Levi is an interesting choice to carry that. Tucker requires a different character type from the easygoing humor that has defined some of Levi’s better-known performances, and he plays the character with far more weariness than swagger. There are flashes of that familiar charisma, but the movie is better when it doesn’t ask him to behave like an invincible action hero. Tucker can work because he looks like someone carrying a responsibility he hasn’t figured out how to live with, especially when old mistakes start to inform new decisions.

Liam Neeson is the name likely to make THE FIX look like another entry in the seemingly endless collection of Neeson-led action thrillers (even after he said almost a decade ago that he was done making action movies), but Larry serves a different objective. He’s the mentor whose influence hangs over Tucker and the others, lending the operation an immediate sense of credibility without the movie having to spend forever explaining why everybody listens when he talks. Neeson has played enough variations of the seasoned operative that very little here stretches him, although his presence gives the film exactly the kind of control it needs.

The rest of the group is where I wanted/needed considerably more. Quincy Isaiah, Wes Chatham, Jake Choi, Augusto Aguilera, and Grant Harvey help create a sense that these guys have worked together and been through something dark. A cast this large inevitably means some members of the team will get left in the dust. THE FIX gives us enough personality to tell them apart without always giving us enough history to make danger feel personal when the movie starts asking us to care about what happens to individual members of the unit; that uneven development becomes harder to ignore.

Moshe is on firmer ground once the operation becomes the focus. There’s a satisfying nuts-and-bolts quality to watching people plan around barriers, adjust when things go wrong, and make decisions knowing that one mistake can destroy the entire mission. THE FIX isn’t trying to reinvent the covert-operations thriller. The action also has more impact when it grows from a plan collapsing than when the film appears to be checking off another required burst of gunfire.

The downside is that THE FIX often tries to be a military drama, an espionage thriller, a rescue movie, and a heist film all at once. Those pieces can coexist, but the screenplay keeps adding to it all until the straightforward urgency that should drive the movie gets buried underneath them. Instead of tightening as it moves deeper into the mission, the story occasionally feels as though it’s discovering another section it needs to think about before reaching the next one.

That contributes to the runtime problem. Two hours and twenty-two minutes isn’t automatically excessive for an action thriller, but THE FIX doesn’t earn all of it through complexity or character development. Cutting twenty or thirty minutes wouldn’t necessarily make the story simpler, but it could make the urgency much harder to lose.

The political setting brings another challenge because a movie involving former CIA operatives entering Tehran comes loaded with real-world baggage whether it wants that responsibility or not. THE FIX is ultimately much more interested in its mission mechanics than providing an extensive geopolitical argument, which is probably the safer choice for this particular story. Even so, the setting sometimes functions more effectively as just an environment than as a place filled by people whose perspectives extend beyond what the American characters need from them. Navid Negahban, Elnaaz Norouzi, Lara Wolf, and Annet Mahendru help keep that side of the film from becoming anonymous. Their presence gives the surrounding conflict more personality, although the screenplay remains firmly attached to Tucker and his team. I would’ve welcomed more time with several of these characters, especially considering the overall runtime.

The action itself keeps the movie from becoming a chore. There’s enough physicality and danger to give the larger confrontations some impact, and the ensemble is convincing enough as a team that their coordination sells situations the screenplay sometimes overcomplicates. Moshe has always been a filmmaker willing to take sizable swings with genre. Although THE FIX is more conventional than some of his earlier work, he still seems interested in making the action serve something beyond spectacle.

Ultimately, I feel like the film tried to say too much, without saying enough. By the final stretch, though, I was feeling the length almost as much as the tension. The movie keeps escalating when a more disciplined version might have trusted the stakes it had already created, and the result is an action thriller that can be entertaining scene by scene without sustaining that same grip throughout its runtime. There are good moments here, along with performances and ideas that suggest something stronger was within reach.

THE FIX lands right around the middle for me because nothing about it is disastrous (barring one of the actors), and several pieces are genuinely enjoyable. Levi makes a questionable, but okay move into heavier action territory, Neeson brings exactly the veteran presence expected of him, and the supporting cast gives the movie plenty to work with once the team enters the field. The problem is that a movie about highly trained people executing an incredibly dangerous operation should understand the value of efficiency better than this one does, and THE FIX spends too much time getting to a destination that would’ve hit harder with less baggage.

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