2014
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For May 2014
May is upon us, and with it traditionally comes the avalanche of beautifully rendered pixels and overpaid Hollywood stars. Except the increasing love for, and success of, the Hollywood blockbuster in recent years has caused a swelling of the season. Come next year, by the first day of May we’ll already have had a penguin-themed Madagascar spin-off, the tragically delayed Fast & Furious 7 and the mother of all superhero smackdowns to date in Avengers: Age Of Ultron before a constant stream of often deliberately brainless eye candy and the occasional thoughtful actionfest takes us right through to November and December, with Star Wars 7, Mission: Impossible 5, Hunger Games 3 1/2 and Kung Fu Panda 3. Along the way we’ll get Bond 24, Jurassic Park 4 and Terminator I-lose-count, a tiny Marvel in the shape of Ant Man, a Fantastic Four reboot, a Ted sequel and seriously, doesn’t anyone even make films without something exploding in them any more?
Thankfully a few people have made simpler films this year, so you’ll actually find more than two films playing in most of your multiplexes this year. Who knows if next year we’ll be so lucky?
Next Goal Wins
For those facing the end of the football season, there’s either two options: you’re a football fan and you can’t wait for the World Cup and the excitement of England getting knocked out in the group stages because they can’t cope with either the heat or Luis Suarez and his Uruguayan team mates, or it’s another miserable month of stupid men in shorts running about pointlessly on a field, and it will be on TV every night until nearly the middle of the summer and oh the humanity. Next Goal Wins might appeal to those with a romance in their hearts but who can’t face a daily dose of soccerball for an extended period.
The Wind Rises
I have to confess I’m something of a latecomer to Japanese animation in general and to Miyazaki in particular, so it’s likely I’ll see his movies in a rather strange order. He does hold a fond place in my heart, not least for the fact that my review of Ponyo was the first ever post on this blog, a little over four years ago. Hopefully I’ll get chance to catch a few more of his master works on the big screen in the next few years.
Concussion
I always get slightly nervous when I see the name Weinstein on a film, not least with the reputation for cutting that Harvey has gotten over the last few years. But this is another film being distributed in this country by Picturehouse Entertainment, and it’s good to see the likes of them and Curzon taking a more active role to get and to keep a wide variety of films in our cinemas. As long as nobody’s got their editing scissors on them too much first.
The Two Faces Of January
It’s amazing what you can find out about people from Wikipedia. Apparently Patricia Highsmith, on whose book of the same name this film is based, was a comic book artist, writing romance comics for Marvel’s predecessors. She was a strong anti-Semite, yet counted notes Jewish people among some of her closer friends. She apparently also liked cats and bred snails. I dread to think what my Wikipedia page would say about me; let’s be thankful I’ll never be that famous.
X-Men: Days Of Future Past
To think there was a time when a Batman sequel came out and we were worried because it had three villains in it. Seems barely credible now, when we can now manage to squeeze in two entire blockbuster casts, some giant fighty robots and the short bloke from Game Of Thrones without even batting an eyelid. There would be less mutants in this film if there were actual mutants in the cast.
Edge Of Tomorrow
And what blockbuster year would feel complete without a Tom Cruise movie? It’s Tom Cruise. Not much more I can say.
Tom Cruise. Mmm.
Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2
The Pitch: Oh what a tangled web(b) we weave…
The Review: There was no question for me who the coolest superhero was when I was a child. (Not least because I was only aware of three.) For while Superman could turn back time and Batman had a sidekick and a utility belt, Spider-Man could climb up walls and spin webs from his hands! Not only that, but in one telling cliffhanger of his TV series he fell off a building, but saved himself by spinning a web to catch himself as he fell! And he got the coolest lines of any of them. These are the kind of things that unnecessarily excite a six year old child, but we now live in a world where every superhero is restricted to an audience no younger than 12 unless they have their parents in tow. Now on our fifth Spider-Man film – the last two, as was the TV series, called Amazing – what does the latest incarnation offer us now it’s got its origin story out of the way?
Nothing particularly amazing is the perhaps unsurprising answer. Marc Webb demonstrates again that his version does have an edge or two over Sam Raimi’s original, firstly in the key personnel. Andrew Garfield is a more satisfying Peter Parker / Spidey than Tobey Maguire ever was, for all the strengths of Sam Raimi’s trilogy, and his chemistry with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacey keeps the film afloat during some of the quieter periods. Sally Field also continues to charm despite being noticeably younger than her comic-book counterpart. The web-swinging and slinging continues to be refined on a film by film basis, and the action scenes make the most of the athletic, gymnastic lead, so there’s certainly a decent amount to satisfy your Spider senses.
The problems start with the villains. We have three, but none are as effective as they might be. Jamie Foxx feels miscast as the pre-transformation Electro, and his character is completely mislaid for large stretches in the middle of the film. He still fares better than Paul Giamatti, whose appearances bookend the film and you might just have worked out who he is by the end of the second of them. Dane DeHaan is an improvement over James Franco’s rather static Harry Osborn, but his relationship with Peter has a hollow, unconvincing feel to it and his transformation into the latest incarnation of a familiar villain is based on some dodgy fudging of the mythology. There’s also a certain amount of franchise sowing going on, from Felicity Jones’ extended cameo to the costumes of future bad guys in the background; the main problem is you can’t help feeling you’d have preferred those costumes to be the ones being worn this time out.
While Webb marshals the action scenes clinically, he’s less successful at wrangling the script from Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jeff Pinkner. Kurtzman and Orci recently announced they would go their separate ways as a writing duo, and on the evidence of this (and Cowboys & Aliens, two Transformers movies and their dreadful effort for Star Trek Into Darkness) it can’t come soon enough. Even three minds aren’t enough to deliver a script that rises above the generic and predictable, spending so much time on the origins of its new characters that it never surprises with the older ones. If you, like me, can’t remember much of what happened in the original of this sequence, you’ll appreciate the extensive catch-ups woven in – which in turn drag the running time out to a testing two hours and twenty – but none of that can help overcome the plodding predictability or prepare you for the slightly sickening crassness of the way in which the climactic twist is staged. When the Marvel properties at Disney are learning and developing, Sony’s Spider-Man just feels like it’s retreading the same mistakes. With two more films and spin-offs already in the early stages of production, they’re going to have to learn the lessons quickly to return Spider-Man to the place of my favourite.
Why see it at the cinema: The web-work is undoubtedly the most impressive yet in the series, and although I saw it in 2D, everything suggested those elements would work well with an extra dimension if you’re so inclined. The action scenes can get a bit busy, so seeing them in a cinema will help work out who’s hitting who with what at key moments.
What about the rating? Rated 12A for moderate violence and threat. The BBFC descriptions become ever more dramatic, including on this occasion the line, “Human characters transform into scary looking super-villains, with close-ups on their creepy looking eyes and skin.” Find me an eleven year old who’s creeped out by this lot.
My cinema experience: A Friday late night showing at the Cineworld in Cambridge. The staff kindly – and firmly – pointed out upon my arrival around 11:20 p.m. that there was nothing at the end of the credits. Not only a generous public service but also undoubtedly a group of people who would be kept working an extra seven minutes at 1:30 a.m. by a bunch of nerds waiting for a clip that never comes. I stayed for the bizarre mid-credits X-Men advert (designed to fulfil a contractual obligation of Marc Webb’s) and then made my excuses.
The Score: 6/10
Review: Transcendence
The Pitch: The Nolan system.
The Review: For all that you can say about cinema, it’s not a career path that lends itself naturally to progression. While the likes of Steven Soderbergh have mastered more than one skill in film production, you don’t hear many stories of key grips that went onto thriving careers as make-up artists. If there is a natural pairing of professions in the film industry, you’d think it’s director and cinematographer, the two people most concerned with getting the image right on screen, but when pretty much every list of famous cinematographers turned directors has Jan “Speed 2” De Bont on it, it’s clearly not an easy transition to make. Full marks for effort to Wally Pfister, then, for deciding to break away from a twenty year career in cinematography and a lengthy collaboration with Christopher Nolan to making his own films.
It’s also decent marks for attainment when it comes to the visuals. Pfister’s films have always had a compelling visual quality and he’s stuck to his principles, shooting Transcendence on traditional 35mm film. In collaboration with another Brit, this time his own cinematographer Jess Hall (veteran of Brit films including Hot Fuzz and Son Of Rambow), Transcendence balances beautiful moments of intimate slo-mo with grander, sweeping vistas. Unlike other blockbusters that live just to excite your inner fanboy with a robot riding a giant dinosaur, Transcendence aims for something subtler. The stock middle-America townscape is a bit of a cliché, but that’s one weak link in Pfister’s composition.
For those getting their hopes up that Pfister’s film could be of equal quality in all the other departments, it’s time to unceremoniously dash those hopes. That even extends as far as general shot composition; while certain brief moments might look good, as a whole the film is a dull canvass of browns and whites and nothing sticks in the mind for more than a few minutes. That pales in comparison to some of the acting, which is led by a dialled-in (probably on a 56k modem) performance from Johnny Depp. Once Depp’s settled on an accent, he sleepwalks through the film, sapping interest out of scenes while barely even trying. Rebecca Hall makes a bit of an effort, but everyone else, from Paul Bettany to Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy, wanders around in a general state of confusion, wondering where their character development has disappeared to and failing to invest the tired script with any sense of conviction.
There are numerous problems with that script, and not only does the dialogue fail to convince in individual scenes, the script as a whole is a damb squib. Transcendence thinks it has a couple of good ideas, but anyone who’s ever seen more than a couple of episodes of any sci-fi series on TV won’t be surprised at any part of the “human consciousness in a computer” plot, and Michael Crichton’s 2002 novel Prey – which wasn’t that great itself – was a far better exploration of the dramatic possibilities of nanotechnology, a thread which plays out laughably here. To top it all off, the script begins at the end and then flashes back, killing any dramatic tension stone dead. Most of the film’s ideas about technology are laughably poor, but not laughable enough to tip the film into the “so bad it’s good” category. When Christopher Nolan comes up with films about dream worlds, wormholes and men who dress as bats and fight crime, you have to wonder what drove Pfister to trot out such a succession of barely warmed-over clichés that make you yearn for some paint to watch drying. Sad to say, but Wally Pfister’s first film makes Jan De Bont’s directorial career look like a constant procession of genius by comparison; even Morgan Freeman reading out binary code for two hours would have been more appealing.
Why see it at the cinema: As I’ve said, there are some lovely looking individual frames, it’s just a shame they never form into anything resembling a coherent whole. But they do look great on a giant cinema screen.
What about the rating? Rated 12A for moderate violence and bloody images. The BBFC rating advice also indicates that, “there is also a scene in which a couple embrace and kiss.” As that’s in the rating advice, does it mean that embracing is only to be witnessed by 11 year olds with the consent of their parents?
My cinema experience: A Sunday evening at my local Cineworld would not normally be heavily populated, but for some reason this was a big draw so I was sat third row from the front. Someone sat in the middle of the bank of seats in front of me, and then refused to move when another couple came in looking for the two seats either side. That confrontation, as brief as it was, proved to be more interesting that anything projected onto the screen in front of them.
The Score: 3/10
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For April 2014
Another month slips by, another month when I’ve managed to watch films in the cinema but not to do very much about telling you about them, dear reader, so apologies. My ever demanding job has allowed me to see eleven films in the cinema this month, clumped into three or four groups when I could spare the time, and has spanned both a triple bill in Norwich (90 mile round trip) and a late night visit to Ipswich (80 mile round trip) but it’s been a mixture of late screenings, with just one film seen on a midweek evening (when normally I’d manage one a week).
In all that time, I’ve not had time to write any blog posts, which is even more of a shame given that the overall quality of the films I’ve seen in the first four months of the year. The graph below shows my average rating for films in the first four months of the year over the last seven years. This year I’ve managed only 35 films in the first four months (compared to a peak of 51 in 2011 and 39 by this time last year, but the overall average rating – both by me and by all users of IMDb, to prove it’s not just my own personal taste) have reached a satisfying peak.
But sadly I’ve been so busy for work I’ve not had chance to tell you that Under The Skin was completely strange, utterly bamboozling and I’m still thinking about it nearly a month later; I’ve not found the time to tell you that Calvary was a devastating and though provoking follow-up to John Michael McDonagh’s superb The Guard, but with a much darker sensibility. You won’t have heard me say that while Asghar Farhadi’s The Past was more drawn out with a slightly weaker ending than his last three features, it’s still better than the output of the majority of western directors and he’s shown he’s as capable outside Iran as he is within it.
Nor have I been able to tell you how much I thought of Richard Ayoade’s sophomore film The Double, or that The Raid 2 ups the stakes on its predecessor, with something resembling a serviceable plot this time and actions scenes that will blow your mind, the car chase alone worth the price of admission. You could at least find the latest Bums On Seats podcast at Cambridge 105 or on iTunes and hear me rave about Joanna Hogg’s thrilling and slightly eccentric Brit flick Exhibition. But you might have to wait until next month before you get an actual review from me – I’ve got a half written one for Transcendence I hope to share with you, along with my crushing disappointment, very soon.
But despite getting to 11 films this month at odd hours, I’ve still managed to miss out on a few that looked interesting. From the Biblical epic of Darren Aronofsky to the latest from Xavier Dolan and a series of James Dean re-releases (never seen any of them, to my shame), these are the six films I’d love to try to catch either in May or before the year is out.
Noah
Tom At The Farm
The Lunchbox
We Are The Best
Wrinkles
Rebel Without A Cause
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For March 2014
I guess this month’s selection of trailers is, in its own way, an apology to you, dear reader. The previous post on this blog is dated 2nd March, written to comment on the Oscars, and they now feel an awfully long time ago. Sadly for my film watching habits but wonderfully for my career, I’ve just changed jobs at work and am currently working 20 – 30 hours a week more than usual while I get my new team and position up and running. You’ll have to forgive me if things are a little sparse round here while that happens, but when it gets to the point where I’m hosting Bums On Seats not only because I enjoy it, but because without it I have no excuse to watch the latest films and then I might just not see any at the moment, then you can probably appreciate how busy I am.
So this month’s trailer breakdown arrives with less than an hour left of March. The clocks have gone forward, Spring is resolutely in the air, and this month’s films have been like Douglas Adams’ infamous deadlines, making that lovely whooshing sound as they fly by without me seeing most of them. Hopefully normal service around here will be resumed soon, but in the meantime here’s this month’s half a dozen most interesting looking previews and how close I’ve managed to get to seeing the films that go with them.
Wake In Fright
How close did I get to seeing it? It was showing at my local Picturehouse, but sadly not at a time I could actually make it in to see it. However, I did discover on Googling the trailer that there are at least two copies of the full film available on YouTube. Maybe one for some bedtime viewing.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
How close did I get to seeing it? Actually managed to see it. Actually loved it. Actually just about to buy Alexandre Desplat’s superb score (all over the trailer) from iTunes. Actually in love with Wes Anderson. #HeteroManCrush
Under The Skin
How close did I get to seeing it? Not yet, but it’s still showing at my local Arts for the next few days, so I’ve not given up hope. Work, don’t make me give up hope.
The Zero Theorem
How close did I get to seeing it? It was showing at three Cineworlds which I’ve been to, but all are more than 50 miles from my house and I just couldn’t find a window for a round trip that long. Shame.
28 Feet From Stardom
How close did I get to seeing it? The film which beat my favourite of 2013 to the Best Picture Oscar is currently showing in Norwich, but no nearer to me. My wife’s been to Norwich twice in the last three days, but on neither occasion was I free to catch a lift. There will be one showing at my local Picturehouse in about a month or so. Wish me luck.
The Past
How close did I get to seeing it? Only on release this week, I’ve seen the last three films from Asghar Farhadi in the cinema – albeit in reverse order thanks to the Cambridge Film Festival – and very much looking forward to the follow up to Fireworks Wednesday, About Elly and A Separation. Hopefully I can tick off this one.
Oscars Countdown: The Oscar Scorecard Of Discontent 2014
You might think it’s odd that someone who professes to like the Oscars so little tends to write so much about them. It’s not that I’m opposed to recognising greatness – you only have to take a look at the list-based awesomeness that is my end of year review each year, which can be found by clicking on any of those “Review Of…” links just up above – it’s just that Oscar and his 7,000 Hollywood mates get these decisions completely right about as often as Halley’s Comet passes.
I don’t stay up for it these days, not least because I tend to use my annual leave either for seeing Mrs Evangelist or for spending my time in film festivals, but for those who do it can be a somewhat tortuous endurance event, with four hours of occasionally handing out an award to someone you’ve never heard of for a film that you might not have seen broken up by the host – this year it’s Ellen DeGeneres but frankly it could be your mum for all the difference it makes – desperately trying to be funny while not offending anyone and for UK viewers, some Z-list celebs giving hollow opinions to whoever’s hosting on Sky Movies this year (I can’t be bothered to look it up).
Anyway, if you’d like something to pass the time between now and stupid o’clock GMT when the awards start, here’s my annual Oscar Scorecard Of Discontent. You can see what I’ve gone for, then I’ve made a blank one for you. Just print it off, fill it out, and then tick it off as the awards come round. If you’ve then mostly circled “Must Not Win Or I Will Sulk All Day Monday” in about eight hours, then you have my deepest sympathies.
If you are staying up or having a party, good luck, we’re all counting on you, have a great time and I’ll see you in the morning, nice and refreshed for either elation or bitter disappointment. Or, as is usual, a fair old mix of both.
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For February 2014
Is it February already? Wow, this year seems to be disappearing faster than ever. Or maybe that’s just my age. It barely feels yesterday that I started my new film list for the year and put to bed the old one, and already I’ve racked up a dozen trips to the cinema. February is traditionally a month where the last few awards contenders creep out, mixed with the big studio pics that really can’t find an audience anywhere else, but this year feels different: the Oscars have been pushed to March by the Winter Olympics, denying us the traditional catharsis of sparkly dresses and low angle shots of Jack Nicholson looking uncomfortable in a dinner jacket for anther few weeks, and The LEGO Movie has opened huge in the US over the weekend with the second biggest February opening ever.
I’m actually relieved it’ll be different this year: I keep detailed records of what I’ve seen, and last February was the worst month since the blog began. Four of the twelve films I saw (A Good Day To Die Hard, Bullet To The Head, I Give It A Year and This Is 40) ended up in my bottom ten of the year and Hitchcock was a close run thing. So surely this year can’t be anything but an improvement? Anyway, to ease the pain of a lack of gold shiny bald men being dolled out this month, I present my own annual entirely made up awards for trailers.
Dallas Buyers Club
Best Actress Called Jennifer Who Isn’t Also Called Lawrence
Best Actress Who Is 41 And Still Gives Me Hope That You Can Grow Old Gracefully That’s Also Called Jennifer
The Christian Bale Memorial Award In The Field Of Extreme Weight Loss
The “Oh Yeah, Whatever Happened To Him” Award, awarded to Jared Leto
Bastards
Best Arty Trailer To Make Me Look Like I’m Vaguely Intelligent And Hopefully Not Pretentious
Cuban Fury
Best Picture Most Likely To Feature A Cameo By Simon Pegg, Probably
Best Effeminate Comedy Character I Probably Shouldn’t Laugh At – Kayvan Novak
The John Barrowman Award For Seemingly Feeling Like He’s In Everything – Chris O’Dowd
Her
Best Use Of A Moustache To Instantly Create A Character – Joaquim Phoenix
Best Female Ensemble Where One Of Them Doesn’t Even Appear On Screen
Best Use Of A Giant Plane That Makes You Wonder If It’s Real Or Visual Effects
Only Lovers Left Alive
Best Use Of Tom Hiddleston To Get All The Marvel Fanboys And Girls To Watch Something Different
Best Use Of A Red Gothic Typeface For A Director’s Name
Most Unlikely Film Being Shown In Cinemas For Valentine’s Day (check your local listings)
Non-Stop
The Executive Decision Award For The Most Generic But Probably Still Exciting Plane-Based Thriller
The Sherlock Award For Best Use Of On-Screen Text Messaging
Best Captain Of A Plane Who Makes You Double Take Because He Looks Eerily Like Jon Stewart Off Of The Daily Show
Best Film Most Likely To Feature An Epic And Quotable Speech From Liam Neeson Because Otherwise What’s The Point In Having Him In An Action Movie, He Is 61 After All
Review: American Hustle
The Pitch: The David O. Russell Repertory Company Presents Hair: The Movie.
The Review: I used to worry about my looks. When I was younger, I developed a beer and crisp-based pot belly, had teeth lifted straight from any American stereotype of Brits and my height had given me a weird hunchback from repeatedly bending over to talk to short people (i.e. everyone). One thing I’ve never had to worry about is my hair, which might sit somewhere on the strawberry blonde spectrum but it’s all mine and while many of my contemporaries have receded or gone completely bald, I’ve still got more than I know what to do with. Maybe it says something about us as a society that so much of the publicity for this film has been devoted to the hair, but it’s also possibly because the film makes such a fuss of it too. From the very first shot, which sees Christian Bale – pot belly, check – struggling to wrangle his unwieldy combover, American Hustle is keen to flaunt its Seventies stylings and the hair can also tell us a lot about the characters.
Take Christian Bale: his Irving Rosenfeld is a shady dealer, with fingers in every pie in the area and most of them as dishonest as the matting of wispy hairs he uses to hide his balding pate. He soon falls for the wily charms of Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), her taste for the high life reflected in her lengthy, sweeping curls. As they cheat and swindle their way through the citizens of New York, they miss the signs from the uptight, permed curls of FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) who sees through their scams – well, some of them – and puts them to work helping to bring down the rich, powerful and corrupt, even if they’ve got the honest, hard working hair that Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) has. Amid it all, Irving’s young trophy wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) and her attention seeking updo might be the spanner in the works, the most unpredictable element in crosses and double crosses that threaten to spiral out of control more than Amy Adams’ party hair.
David O. Russell is forming a reputation for being an actor’s director, and on that front he succeeds admirably. Those faring better are the The Fighter alumni, Christian Bale and Amy Adams, who take a firm grip on the film and never look likely to let go. Bale’s usual physical transformation shows a typical absence of vanity, but he nails the more comedic tone superbly. Amy Adams once again shows, as she did in PTA’s The Master, that she can more than hold her own in male dominated casts and switches from powerfully sexy to fragile and vulnerable as required. Those coming back from Silver Linings Playbook are slightly less successful, Bradley Cooper just dialling up the performance to indicate frustration and Jennifer Lawrence feels a good ten years too young for her role (despite being as enjoyable as ever to watch). Jeremy Renner does exactly what’s required of him with little opportunity for more, while the stand out in the supporting cast is Louis CK’s long-suffering boss of Bradley Cooper.
But, as with Silver Linings Playbook, a collection of strong performances don’t necessarily add up to a great film and while American Hustle isn’t aiming to be as profound or emotional and does hold together better, it is the cinematic equivalent of Christian Bale’s elaborate combover. While it’s never less than fascinating to watch, it’s lacking in substance and unsatisfying the closer you get to it, and it in the final analysis it feels wispy and thin. While you don’t have to have depth to have quality, American Hustle always has the feeling that it thinks it’s better than it is, and in particular the ending is aiming for clever twists that feel disappointing and obvious. David O. Russell is capable of films with urgency and immediacy such as Three Kings, but other than a sense of period American Hustle lacks any sense of visual panache that would help elevate it to the pantheon of Great American films. Maybe, then, it’s not surprising that American Hustle should be a little (hair)style over substance, but will work if you set your expectations to somewhere between enjoyable and forgettable.
Why see it at the cinema: It has a certain swagger, and it’s consistently entertaining, but David O. Russell isn’t quite the visual stylist of a Scorcese or a Soderbergh. The casino sequences are probably the visual highlight, but lovers of Seventies music will appreciate the soundtrack on a decent cinema sound system.
What about the rating? Rated 15 for strong language. Not affecting the rating significantly, there’s also some violence in the dark and some drug taking that “isn’t remarked upon.” Remember kids, just say no(thing).
My cinema experience: A packed Saturday evening at the Cineworld in Cambridge, and an audience that by and large seemed a little disappointed as they filed out at the end.
The Score: 8/10
Review: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
The Pitch: We don’t need another hero. Let’s just reboot one of the old ones again.
The Review: We love spy movies, don’t we? From the suave sophistication of James Bond to the amnesiac thrashings of Jason Bourne, we can’t get enough of secrets, lies and organisational subterfuge. For some reason, the adventures of Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst Jack Ryan have never quite caught the imagination of cinema audiences to the same extent: The Hunt For Red October is fondly remembered, but Alec Baldwin was quickly replaced by Harrison Ford, and subsequently nearly a decade passed before the series and the character were rebooted, this time with Ben Affleck. As more than a dozen years have elapsed since The Sum Of All Fears, Paramount clearly felt Ryan was ripe for another reboot and this time Chris Pine’s been enlisted to protect, to serve and to sneak into darkened rooms late at night. Where all of the previous Ryan’s have used Clancy novels as a starting point, this latest Ryan adventure follows that other, more recent movie tradition: the origin story.
Part of the reason for avoiding the rest of Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels is that most of those not yet adapted deal with terrorist attacks leading to Ryan becoming president, ending up at war with Japan and someone flying a plane into the U.S. Capitol building. It’s maybe an uncomfortable irony that Shadow Recruit opens with Ryan studying at the London School Of Economics when 9/11 happens and encourages him to enlist. One major helicopter accident later and Ryan is recovering in hospital, being goaded back to health by student medic Cathy (Kiera Knightley) and visited by, you guessed it, shadowy military type Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner) who secretly recruits him into the CIA. Ryan uncovers evidence of dodgy Russian goings-on and is dispatched to Moscow to investigate further, only to come up against the henchmen of businessman Viktor Cheverin (Kenneth Branagh), bent on sending the world into a financial meltdown which will see Russia come out on top.
Branagh both nibbles on the corners of the scenery and directs, but it’s difficult to see any innovation in either. Working from a script by Adam Kozad and David Koepp, Branagh has crafted not so much as a throwback spy thriller but one that’s stuck back, somewhere in the Sixties. While the overarching plot machinations have a distinctly modern twist, with Russian dealings in the economy rather than the arms race of the Cold War, the CIA apparently hasn’t moved on past men being passed documents in darkened cinemas or exchanging looks and guns on poorly lit park benches at night. If you’re looking for an honest to goodness, old fashioned spy thriller, then Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit certainly fits that bill. Sadly, it fits it so well that there’s very little which will surprise you if you’re a fan of the genre, and most of it’s been done better elsewhere.
Take the highlight of the film, which consists of a central stretch where Ryan attempts to invade a building and capture info while the rest of his team work distraction and cover: it’s Mission: Impossible but without the dangling wires and suspense, and it segues into a car chase notable only for the odd decision to threaten a victim with a light bulb. An early bathroom fight recalls the opening of Casino Royale, the car chases have more than a touch of Bourne and the climax feels like a thousand other generic action movies that you’ve seen before (topped off with an explosion that feels cut and paste from a Die Hard sequel, of all things). Chris Pine feels more at home playing blue collar workers and starship captains than he does as a CIA analyst and spy, and it doesn’t help that he has zero chemistry with Keira Knightley either. Kevin Costner is good value, although never gets out of third gear, and Branagh’s strangulated Russian vowels are never less than entertaining, but this is undemanding and generic fare. Maybe it would be best to shake things up with an intercontinental war, for this retro thriller has at best retro thrills.
Why see it at the cinema: The larger set-pieces will benefit from being seen in a cinema, but it’s not massively cinematic. No-one would fault you for waiting for the DVD.
What about the rating? Rated 12A for moderate violence, injury detail and one use of strong language. Spying is still, it would seem, a fairly civilised pastime.
My cinema experience: A packed Friday night at the Cambridge Cineworld, and as I was seeing a double bill of this and Lone Survivor I felt the need for sustenance in the form of that classic combo, Diet Coke and Maltesers. Sadly in my desire to get fed I managed to miss the first 30 seconds or so – and end up having to sit almost in the front row – after barely twenty minutes of ads and trailers. Still, you won’t hear me complaining too much.
The Score: 5/10
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