The November Man

Posted on August 27, 2014 at 10:57 am

Pierce Brosnan knows what it is like to play a spy in a big-budget, glamorous, blockbuster. He was the most urbane of Bonds in four movies. He knows what it is to play a seedier spy in a prestige, mildly meta movie, the 2001 film “The Tailor of Panama” (with Daniel Radcliffe in a pre-Potter role). So perhaps he thought it was a good idea to produce and star in “The November Man,” a spy story set mostly in Eastern Europe, based on There Are No Spies by Bill Granger. It was not. “The November Man” barely reaches the standard of a generic throw-away thriller, with a sub-par storyline and painfully tiresome dialog.

It begins in 2008 Montenegro, as a venerable CIA operative named Peter Devereaux (Brosnan) sees his young padawan smooching with a pretty girl at an outdoor cafe and harshly explains that personal relationships are out of the question in their line of work. He indicates a guy with a telephoto lens at a nearby table. “Us or them?” the spy-in-training asks. “How the F should I know? Does it really matter?” the world-weary sensei responds. This brief exchange tells you pretty much everything you need to know, or, rather, will find out whether you want to know it or not. Do you think that Devereaux will have some personal entanglement of his own? Do you think the question of who is “us” and who is “them” will provide the twist so unsurprising that even the idiot with the roller bag who wanders out of the hotel elevator without noticing that everyone around him has guns could figure it out? Are the answers to these two rhetorical questions obvious? Well, so is the movie.

Obvious, that is, when it isn’t just being stupid. Throughout the film, shoot-outs, car chases, and explosions occur almost constantly and yet none of the extras ever seem to notice and no one ever calls the police.

The sidekick trainee is David Mason, played by Australian actor Luke Bracey with a blankness that may explain why he was cast as Johnny Utah in the unnecessary upcoming remake of “Point Break.” Bill Smitrovich is, as always, just fine as Dvereaux’s spy boss. Brosnan, even with all of his movie star charisma, cannot make this tired storyline or pedestrian action scenes hold our interest. It is all as pointless as the explanation for the title — a character explains that was Devereaux’s office nickname because after him, there’s nothing left. Huh? After November is, well, December, and Christmas, and then a whole new year. Pondering the meaning of the nickname, though, was much more entertaining than the film.

Parents should know that this film has extensive spy-style peril and violence including some graphic and disturbing scenes, guns, explosions, chases, torture, with many characters injured and killed, also rape, child prostitution, terrorism, drinking, smoking, drugs, sexual references and situation, and very strong, offensive, and crude language.

Family discussion: How can we balance the need for national security with the need for accountability? How did Mason decide who to trust? What does the reveal about the villain tells us about contemporary geopolitics?

If you like this, try: Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond films and “The Matador”

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3 Days to Kill

Posted on February 20, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Kevin Costner is back, big time, with five scheduled releases this year. It’s only February, and this is his second big spies-and-shoot-outs action film of 2014, following Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. This one, from writer Luc Besson and director McG (“Charlie’s Angels”) seems inspired by Liam Neeson’s annual series of middle-aged action films (“Taken,” “Taken 2,” next week’s “Non-Stop”). This will not go down as an especially memorable entry in the filmography of Costner or Besson, but it is a big improvement over Besson’s previous middle-aged star action film, From Paris With Love, with John Travolta, also set in Paris. Costner reminds us why he is a movie star with ease and likability that is a perfect on-screen match for Besson’s trademark mash-up of intense action, gooey sentiment, and goofy comedy.

Costner plays Ethan Renner, a long-time CIA operative. He is not a spy. He is an assassin. He is sent in to kill people, presumably bad guys, and he is very good at it. But when we meet him chasing after a bad guy known as “the albino” and clearly not feeling well. It turns out he has cancer. A doctor tells him to get his affairs in order and crisply thanks him for his service to the CIA.

Ethan returns to his apartment, where a large family of sweet-natured squatters from Africa have moved in and repainted his bedroom. Under the law, squatters cannot be evicted until spring, plus one of them is a young pregnant woman, so he lets them stay. Ethan contacts his estranged-but-n0t-divorced wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen) and his teenaged daughter, Zoey (Halliee Steinfeld) to spend time with them while he can. And then Vivi (Amber Heard), a CIA operative who dresses like Lady Gaga, makes him an offer he can’t refuse. If Ethan will take one last job, she will give him an experimental drug that could cure his cancer and give him more time.

Ethan races around Paris, alternately torturing the director of a high-end limo service to get information about the whereabouts of The Albino’s accountant and asking him for parenting tips, giving his daughter lessons in bike-riding and, with the help of that accountant, a recipe for spaghetti sauce, hallucinating due to the effects of the experimental drug and swigging vodka as an antidote, and doing some very bad things to some very bad guys. A lot of it makes no sense, but let’s face it, that’s not why we’re here.

Parents should know that this film has extensive spy-style action peril and violence. A character is an assassin and many other characters are injured and killed with guns, chases, explosions, fights, some disturbing images, mortal illness, drinking, smoking, drugs, some nudity and suggestive dancing, non-explicit childbirth scene, and some strong language.

Family discussion: Is Ethan a good dad? How did the theme of fatherhood come up in different ways throughout this film?

If you like this, try: “The Professional” and “The Transporter”

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Action/Adventure Spies Thriller

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Posted on January 16, 2014 at 6:01 pm

There are three conclusions to draw from this reboot of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character. First, it plays like an infomercial for NSA access to, well, pretty much everything. Second, no matter how attractive the actors and how thrilling the score, there is no way to make it exciting to watch someone banging on a keyboard and staring intently at a computer screen as the “loading” indicator creeps along. Third, when spy movies run out of other ideas, they conclude that the fate of the United States and the rest of the world is not enough to hold our attention, so it must be time to kidnap the hero’s girlfriend.

Chris Pine (“Star Trek’s” Captain Kirk) takes over the role of Jack Ryan from Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck to play Tom Clancy’s egghead action hero, Jack Ryan, PhD. Bringing him up to date, we see him as a student at the London School of Economics, helplessly watching the terrorist attack of 9/11 on television, then enlisting in the Marines, being shot down, saving two of his men despite the gravest of injuries, and then, in rehab to learn to walk again, meeting two people who will change his life. One is Cathy, a pretty med student (Keira Knightly, with an American accent). The other is a guy in a suit named Harper who recruits Ryan to work for the CIA, deep undercover…on Wall Street. I really liked the idea that the government would recognize the threat to national security from the too big to fail financial institutions, but it turns out that isn’t it. Ryan was sent to Wall Street to spy on the same old bad guys we always spy on, Russians, this time trying to manipulate our financial markets.

Director Kenneth Branagh’s biggest mistake was in the casting of the villain: Kenneth Branagh. We know he’s evil because he has a sleek, spare, shiny black office and he sits there grimly, listening to an ethereal aria and beating up a guy who was clumsy in giving him a shot. Branagh seems to enjoy playing bad guys — most recently in “The Wild Wild West,” “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” and “Pirate Radio.” He’s better at playing the uptight bureaucratic type (or the self-important type as he did in “My Week with Marilyn”) than the larger-than-life bad guy needed for a Bond-style film. In fairness, the screenplay, originally written as a stand-alone and then adapted for the Jack Ryan character, lacks the Tom Clancy magic that makes his stories so absorbing, the authenticity of the technological details and the depth of character. Compare this pallid Russian bad guy and his generic compatriots to the superbly crafted, complex Soviet characters in “The Hunt for Red October,” from Sean Connery’s captain to Joss Ackland’s diplomat. The other big problem is the increasing ridiculousness of the storyline. The United States has such a crackerjack team in Moscow that we can send in the espionage equivalent of magic elves to secretly remake a luxury hotel room that has been shattered in a shoot-out/fight/drowning so that in less than a couple of hours it is like new, with just a little wet grout (and of course the removal of the dead body) to show that anything had been changed. And yet, when they need to do the one thing any spy team should learn on day one, breaking into a secure location, the only one who can do it is our boy Jack, the PhD from Wall Street? Once the break-in takes place, it just gets silly, with a lot of intent people banging on keyboards and getting instant access to thousands of data sources and a series of increasingly implausible bang bang with even less plausible banter. Ryan is the increasingly implausible Swiss Army knife of superspies, equally adept at hand-to-hand combat, stunt driving, and hacking.

You’ve got to grade January releases on a curve, and by that standard, it barely passes muster. In any other month, it would be strictly wait for DVD.

Parents should know that this film includes extensive scenes of spy-style peril and violence including chases, crashes, and explosions, guns, knives, drowning, fights, and terrorism, references to painkiller dependency and abuse and alcohol abuse, and brief strong language.

Family discussion: Does this make you feel differently about how much access the government should have to private data? What qualities make a good spy?

If you like this, try: the other Jack Ryan movies, especially “The Hunt for Red October,” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Torn Curtain”

List: Jack Ryan

Posted on January 12, 2014 at 3:49 pm

As we prepare for this week’s release of the Jack Ryan prequel, “Shadow Recruit,” you might want to take a look at the other thrillers based on Tom Clancy’s dashing hero. Watch how each one of these stories reflects its era.

The Hunt for Red October (1990) Alec Baldwin played Ryan with an all-star cast including Sean Connery, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Fred Thompson, in a story about a Soviet submarine captain who wants to defect.

Patriot Games (1992) Harrison Ford took over as Ryan, who foils an IRA terrorist attack and then himself becomes the target.

Clear and Present Danger (1994) Ford again, this time pulled into an illegal US war against a Colombian drug cartel.

The Sum of All Fears (2002) Ben Affleck took over as a younger Jack Ryan, who has to stop a terrorist attack at a Baltimore football game.

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Lists Spies

RED 2

Posted on July 18, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Catherine Zeta Jones seems to be making a habit of appearing in the dumbed-down sequels to big, all-star franchises. First there was “Oceans 12,” and now there’s an utterly thankless role in “Red 2,” a stylish but empty follow-up to the original, based on the comic book about spies who are classified as “retired extremely dangerous.”

It was a lot of fun the first time around to see an over-the-hill-gang take on a spy story with an all-star cast that included Oscar-winners Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and Richard Dreyfuss along with Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, and Mary-Louise Parker. It was a lot of fun. This one, not so much.

Dean Parisot (“Galaxy Quest”) takes over as director from Robert Schwentke (whose new action comedy, “RIPD,” is also being released this week). Willis returns as Frank Moses, the once-top CIA operative with the American equivalent of a license to kill. He is now living happily ever after with Sarah (Parker), the woman he met on the customer support line and sort of kidnapped in the first film.

Happily ever after is a little boring for both of them. Shopping at Costco does not compare to the good old run-with-a-gun days. When Marvin (Malkovich), somewhat paranoid following years of CIA-sponsored LSD experiments, shows up to tell them they are in danger, Frank and Sarah are almost relieved. After all, she reminds him, he gets restless if he isn’t killing people (note: not saving the world — it is killing people he misses).

Parisot stages some nice fight scenes. The bad guy points out that it’s seven to one and Frank is in handcuffs. We know he will get out of it, but it is fun to see how he does it. It would be more fun with less carnage. Even if we were not living in a more sensitive time when it comes to the casual — even gleeful — treatment of senseless widespread slaughter, this would be over the top. Almost as bad is the uselessness of another death that adds nothing to the story.

The plot is not much — there’s a MacGuffin thing that could destroy the world and our heroes have been framed so they are being pursued as they try to save the day. Someone apparently did a Google search on what the best-protected international locations are and sent the RED team to break into them.

These always-watchable stars do their best. Helen Mirren is clearly having a blast as a cheerful assassin with a freezer full of bodies, especially when she gets to pretend to be a madwoman who thinks she is a queen, the role Mirren has played many times. Her “Hitchcock” costar Anthony Hopkins is a treat as a tweaked version of the fusty professor type he played in films like “Shadowlands.” Willis and Parker have palpable chemistry, which makes it all the more disappointing that they are stuck with dreary jealousy banter. Parisot tries to hide the script’s frequent sags with smartly-staged action scenes (the martial arts bouts with Byung-hun Lee, “G.I. Joe’s” Storm Shadow, are electrifying) and, less successfully, by having the characters chit-chat about relationship advice as they are chasing, shooting, and bombing. The AARP-eligible cast still has it. Next time, the MacGuffin they seek should be a better script.

Parents should know that this film includes constant action-style spy violence and peril with chases, crashes, explosions, guns, knives, martial arts, and a weapon of mass destruction. It has a casual attitude about a very large body count and a lot of property damage. There is also some strong language, drinking, drugs, and some sexual references.

Family discussion: What made some of the characters switch sides? What is the difference between following the rules and doing what is right?

If you like this, try: the original “Red” and “Hitchcock,” also starring Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Anthony Hopkins

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Action/Adventure Series/Sequel Spies