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”

Ride Along

Posted on January 16, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Ice Cube and Kevin Hart have such a devoted fan base that they can count on them to buy a ticket to anything they do, and that is pretty much what they have done here in a generic buddy cop movie that wears out its welcome quickly but keeps on slogging through every possible action comedy cliché. Is there an angry and frustrated police chief? Check. Are there two opposite kind of guys who squabble all the time but develop a grudging respect for one another? And one is a serious, taciturn loner and the other is a volatile, voluble guy with impulse control problems? Check. Is there a mysterious crime kingpin no one has seen who will turn out to be a surprise guest star but not really a surprise because the name was in the opening credits? Check. Will a trusted person turn out not to be trustworthy, but that won’t be much of a surprise either? Check check check check check. Is this one of those movies where no one told the star it should have been better because the star is also the producer? I don’t need to add a “check” there, do I?

Ice Cube plays James, a tough cop who has been after the mysterious Omar for years. He gets little support from his boss (Bruce McGill), who is losing patience with the mayhem James has created with little to show for it. Kevin Hart plays Ben, a high school security guard, who is dating James’ sister, Angela (Tika Sumpter). Ben hopes to be accepted by the police academy so he can earn James’ respect and marry Angela. But James finds it hard to respect anyone, especially Ben. They agree to a test. James will allow Ben to ride along with him for one day. If he can prove himself to be reliable, trustworthy, and brave, James will approve of Ben’s relationship with Angela.

Will James do everything he can to scare Ben away? What do you think? Will any of it make any sense? Not really. Will they try to get laughs out of pointless destruction and reckless shooting injuries? Yep. How about from being doped up on morphine? Sure, why not?

Their journey will take them to a confrontation with bikers, a shooting gallery, a completely pointless encounter with a guy who is trashing a grocery store, taking his clothes off, and pouring honey on his chest, and, of course, as we continue to check off every ingredient from the generic cop movie recipe, the strip club, PG-13 version. The ingredient it misses, though is characters we care about. The movie relies much too heavily on our interest in Ice Cube and Kevin Hart and is too lazy to make us interested in James or Ben. It is hard to want to see James develop respect for Ben when Ben is annoying, cowardly, and arrogant. It is hard to want to see Ben learn anything from James when James goes to such lengths to mess with him. Most of all, it is hard to sit through this movie when we know that both men can do better.

Parents should know that this film includes frequent law-enforcement peril and violence with many guns, chases, and explosions, characters injured and killed, some violence intended to be humorous, use of morphine portrayed as comic, strong language (s-word, b-word, n-word), skimpy clothes, strip club (no nudity), very crude humor, explicit sexual references and non-explicit situation

Family discussion: How did James’ suspicious nature help him in his job? How did it impair his judgment? How would you ask Ben to prove himself?

If you like this, try: the “Lethal Weapon” movies and “The Other Guys”

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The Nut Job

Posted on January 16, 2014 at 6:00 pm

I miss the days when the economics of animation were so daunting that we were assured a certain level of quality. Yes, there were some low points that don’t even qualify for a Disney re-issue (I could find some affection for “Chicken Little” and “Treasure Planet,” but even I can’t find much to like in “The Black Cauldron” or “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”). Unfortunately, now that computer modeling makes animation more affordable, movies are getting made that don’t meet the minimum standards for a feature film.

“The Nut Job” is not an awful movie, nowhere near as bad as last year’s “Free Birds” or “Escape from Planet Earth.” It is just not very good, with sluggish pacing and a weak script that is both over- and under-written. One telling detail is the movie’s reliance on the 2012 Psy hit song “Gangnam Style.” When a two-year-old song is a movie’s high point, it’s in trouble. The thanks to the tourism bureau of South Korea in the credits is also an indication that entertainment and story-telling were not the sole purpose of the film.

The voice talent is fine, especially Maya Rudolph as a bulldog, but the visuals are not especially imaginative. As we see so often in sub-par animation, the focus (literally) seems to be on making every hair distinct rather than in finding a visual way to move the story. Very simple, basic fundamentals like a sense of place and the relationships of the various locations to each other are poorly handled and the 3D is entirely unnecessary.

If you want to see an entertaining and funny movie about backyard creatures trying to steal nuts, take a look at an old Disney “Chip ‘n’ Dale” cartoon. This has essentially the same idea, but weighed down with complications that, like the hyper-realism of each hair in the animals’ fur, overtakes the big picture.

A squirrel named Surly (Will Arnett) is a cynical loner with just one friend, a rat. They live in a city park. Surly has no interest in cooperating with the rest of the animals, who work together to gather food. Their leader is Raccoon (Liam Neeson), and when he warns that they do not have enough food, the responsible, loyal, and dedicated Andie (Katherine Heigl) and dim, overconfident Grayson (Brendan Fraser), regarded by all the animals as their hero, go off in search of food and find the same target already identified by Surly, a nut cart. When their competition over the cart results in disaster that destroys the animals’ entire store of food, Surly is banished. He is lost at first as he explores the city for the first time, but then he finds the nut shop behind the cart, which turns out to be a front for a group of bank robbers.

So there’s conflict between Surly and Andie, the animals and the humans, the squirrels and some scary-looking rats, the squirrels and the bulldog, the squirrels and various perilous spots, the robbers and each other, the robbers and the bank, and the only thing the kids enjoyed at the screening I attended was the bodily function humor and some slapstick. Then there’s the issue of looking out for oneself only versus being part of a group, which feels like it was thrown in at the last minute. Most of the movie is about two elaborate robberies but the one I minded was the loss of the time I spent watching it.

Parents should know that there is a good deal of cartoon-style peril and violence, including guns and scary rats, but no one gets badly hurt (stay through the credits to be reassured). There is some mild language and some crude potty humor. Human and animal characters spend most of the movie plotting thefts with little recognition that this could be wrong or hurting anyone.

Family discussion: Why did Surly and Andie have different ideas about being part of the community? Which characters trusted the wrong people or animals?

If you like this, try: “Over the Hedge”

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G.B.F.

Posted on January 14, 2014 at 1:50 pm

Writer George Northy and director Darren Stein manage to subvert and salute the traditions of the high school comedy in this smart, fresh, and funny story that shakes up the classic elements of teen movies but recognizes their eternal verities. It is fitting that a story about undermining stereotypes slyly undermines expectations of high schoolers and high school movies. Everything from “Mean Girls” to “Clueless” to “Pretty in Pink” gets shaken and stirred.

High school makes a great setting because it is a universal experience of heightened emotions that lend themselves well to comedy, drama, and identity. It is the last place where everyone is pretty much stuck together. The core elements of high school movies usually feature an outcast and often end up at prom. “G.B.F.,” which stands for “gay best friend” follows that formula. It is the story of two closeted gay seniors in a school that (improbably) does not have a single out gay student. While a few years ago, this might have been a touching story about the courage to come out and confront homophobia, and a few years before that a comedy about a student pretending to be gay but really being straight, this film is set in a school with straight students who are desperately hoping for openly gay classmates to come out so that they can befriend them. It’s hard to have a gay-straight alliance without any gay members. And not one, not two, but three high school divas are desperately seeking a GBF as an accessory, to tell them how fierce they are.

The three divas are drama queen (really, she rules the theater clique) Caprice (Xosha Roquemore), Mormon goodie girl ‘Shley (Andrea Bowen) and capo de tutti capi Fawcett (Sasha Pieterse). When Tanner (Michael J. Willett) is accidentally outed via an app on his phone, he all goes from zero to hero as the three girls compete with each other for his attention and favor. The girls have a few surprises in store as well, as does Shley’s boyfriend.

The tone falters in spots and the acting falters frequently. The appearance of Natasha Lyonne as a teacher just reminds us of how much better she was as a teen actress (especially in another gay-themed film, “But I’m a Cheerleader”) than many of the cast here. But the quick, witty dialogue and the good heart of the film make it fun to watch and the heartening message helps smooth over the rough spots.

Lone Survivor

Posted on January 9, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Director Peter Berg is as good as it gets when it comes to putting a particular kind of male chemistry on screen. If he was writing instead of filming, he would dunk his pen in testosterone, beard stubble, and sweat. Whether it is the small town Texas football community of “Friday Night Lights,” the disastrous bachelor party of “Very Bad Things,” or the aliens and explosions of the under-rated “Battleship,” Berg understands the rhythms of guy-talk that circles around the still core of pure masculinity. There are nearly as many f-words per minute in this film as in the record-breaking “Wolf of Wall Street.” But there the language was used to show off, to convey bravado, for shock and awe. Here the heirs to a long tradition of colorful military argot almost have air quotes around the language. It’s almost a mirror image; on Wall Street, they use bad words to seem tougher. These Navy Seals use bad language with irony — they know that no words can be as tough as they really are or express what they have really seen and done. For them, the inadequacy of even the most provocative language is the joke.

This is the true story of a disastrous Navy SEAL mission in Afghanistan, based on the book Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell. We know from the title and from the earliest moments of the movie that Luttrell, played by Mark Wahlberg, will be the only one still around at the end of the movie. And so, we steel ourselves, knowing we will spend just enough time with the characters to become attached to them before they are sent off on a doomed mission to take out a ‘bad guy” in Afghanistan and start getting killed.

As in most military dramas, real and fictional, there are archetypal characters. There’s a new addition and a hardened vet. And there is Luttrell, a medic, a witness, like Ishmael in Moby Dick the survivor who carries the stories of the others with him.

This is not “action violence,” with super-effective weapons on our side and endless just-misses from the enemy, along with exciting explosions and instant death. This is messy, dirty, blood-gushing and agonizing wartime violence. Berg pays tribute to these men by showing us that their courage, dedication, and skill were unparalleled and the tragic stupidity of war presented them with a series of awful choices and unthinkable danger. At one point, when they have been spotted by (apparent) civilians, including a young boy, they stand there and discuss their options — let them go and risk having them tell the enemy where they are, tie them up and risk having them die of predators or starvation, or kill them, preserving the mission but putting into question the larger issues, from what happens when it gets reported on CNN and what we are fighting for if that is who we’ve become. That may be the most heartbreaking moment of the film — until the end, when we see the real faces of the brave young men who died. They knew what they owed us. Perhaps this movie will help remind us what we owe them.

Parents should know that this movie includes constant wartime peril and violence with many characters injured and killed, children in peril, guns, explosions. There are very disturbing and graphic images of characters being hit with bullets, many sad deaths, as well as constant very strong and sometimes crude language.

Family discussion: What elements of the training and briefings were important to helping the SEALS do their job? What more did they need? Who was right in the discussion of what to do when they were “compromised” in being spotted by civilians?

If you like this, try: “Act of Valor,” with real-life Navy SEALS playing fictional versions of themselves and “We Were Soldiers,” about the early days of the American involvement in the Vietnam War.