JACK RYAN: Shallow Reboot

Opening today at a big ass multiplex near you:



JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT 

(Dir. Kenneth Branaugh, 2014)

I just got through the painful process of accepting Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in the relaunched STAR TREK series, now I have to accept him as Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan in another reboot of a Paramount franchise too?



Apparently so as Pine is the fifth actor to fill the shoes of the intrepid CIA agent since the techno thriller series started in 1992 with Alec Baldwin in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Harrison Ford took over the role for two entries - PATRIOT GAMES and CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER in 1992 and 1994, then after a break of eight years, Ben Affleck made an unsuccessful stab at the Ryan role in THE SUM OF ALL FEARS (2002).



Now, after another long break we've got JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT, helmed by Kenneth Branaugh, who also plays the cold-eyed Russian villain. This being his directorial followup to THOR, Brannaugh has now officially re-branded himself as a big studio action movie maker.



David Koepp and Adam Cozad's screenplay, which isn't based on any particular Clancy novel, rewinds to the beginning of Ryan's career - we first see him as a student at the London School of Economics watching the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers on television. After a stint in the Marines where he almost loses a leg in a helicopter accident, Pine's Ryan gets recruited by Kevin Costner as a CIA operative to be a deep-cover financial analyst working on Wall Street. This is something he keeps secret from his fiancé (Keira Knightley), TRUE LIES-style, into the present day.



So far, so formulaic.



Learning of a possible terrorist attack that would lead to an American financial crash, Pine travels to scenic Moscow to thwart Branaugh's evil industrialist plotting to bring on what he calls “the second Great Depression.”



I feel like J.K. Simmons as a befuddled CIA man in the Coen brothers' BURN AFTER READING when I ask “the Russians?” I mean, I know that the roots of Ryan are based in Cold War espionage, but here it seems that the Soviet backdrop is aping recent similarly set spy capers like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL or, worse, the fifth DIE HARD movie which came out this same time last year.



The lack of genuine suspense is palpable in this routine mess in which the fight and chase scenes are horribly edited, the dialogue stiff, and the pacing scattered through the distractingly shiny surfaces.



And the film has no business being in IMAX as it wasn't shot by IMAX cameras and it has no big cinematic money shots that warrant such presentation. Even in what's supposed to be the movie's big climax, involving a van carrying a nuclear device going off the side of a bridge into the Hudson river and exploding, they don't show it long enough to make any impact.



There's also a mind-numbing Russian restaurant-set centerpiece sequence in which Knightly (who should go back to Victorian-era costume dramas and not attempt an American accent again) tries to distract Branaugh over dinner while her hubby is breaking into Branaugh's office that drags the whole narrative down. Hard to believe that screenwriters Koepp and Cozad thought that this was inspired material at all.



In a confident yet somewhat wooden performance, Pine is fine as the reluctant title character, but beyond his egghead calculations there's not much of a persona on display. 



JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT (such a generic title) is a shallow reboot that doesn't know how to elevate its hero into anything approaching the heights of Bond or Bourne, and make itself out to be anything better than standard issue spy fodder. 



More later...

THOR: The Film Babble Blog Review

THOR (Dir. Kenneth Branaugh, 2011)

(Warning: This review may contain Spoilers!)

Summer doesn't officially begin until late June, but the summer movie season began last week with the opening of the franchise front-runner FAST FIVE. However the season doesn't really feel like it's underway until a big-ass superhero flick swoops in, so today we get us the latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: THOR.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is a cocky (and somewhat douchey) Norse God who lives in the splendiforic golden CGI-ed city of Asgard off in the heavens above, in another realm, or something.

Thor's father, the King of their realm, played with his patented gravely gravitas by Anthony Hopkins, is ready to let his son take the throne, but an attack by a gang of scaly skinned creepy creatures called Frost Giants throws that plan out of whack.

The Frost Giants steal the source of Asgard's power "the Casket of Ancient Winters." Defying their father, Thor and his brother (Tom Hiddleston) go after their frigid foes into their icy realm, along with their gung-ho troop of hearty warriors (Tadanobu Asano, Joshua Davis, Ray Stevenson, and Jaimie Alexander).

A busy and bombarding battle goes down, which doesn't please Hopkins so he banishes his son to Earth, and throws his hammer of power down there with him.

It then becomes a bit of a fish out of water story with Thor meeting up with a trio of scientific researchers in a desert in New Mexico where he crash lands - Natalie Portman (much more animated than in YOUR HIGHNESS), a befuddled Stellan Skarsgård, and the wise-cracking Kat Dennings - who take him in as they just happen to be up on Nordic mythology.

Thor's predicament is that he has to fight through a military instillation that has surrounded his mighty hammer in the desert since, like the Arthurian legend, it can not be removed by just anyone.

The film gets bogged down in noisy fight scenes and impenetrable exposition that I couldn't follow recognize the weight of, but since I don't know the comic from which this is based, that stuff may mean a lot more to the hardcore. I mean, I get that Thor must fight his brother Hiddleston, who turns out to be half Frost Giant I guess, and take on a giant destructive robot in order to restore the kingdom of Asgard and awaken his father from some deep sparkling golden slumber, I think.

It was hard to follow or care about this because Hemsworth has little charisma or believability in the role, and his being paired with Portman is forced and fairly chemistry-less.

Those elements don't completely cripple THOR, because on the surface it's a serviceable super hero movie with plenty of fast paced action that folks just wanting mindless thrills will likely go for.

It's also fun to see how the Marvel movies are building what my fellow local entertainment writer friend Zack Smith calls an "uber continuity" with Clark Gregg reprising his role as Agent Coulson from IRON MAN 1 & 2, a cameo by Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye, and an after the end-credits scene, which I won't spoil, but will just say that it foreshadows events to come in THE AVENGERS, so stay until the very end.

I was very surprised to see that this was directed by Kenneth Branaugh because in retrospect except for some nuanced acting from a few members of the cast, there is precious little in this assembly line formula that could be reasonably attributed to him.

While I normally avoid 3-D, I didn't have a choice with the advance screening I saw of this. I didn't get a headache, but apart from a few scattered arresting visuals, the 3-D added very little.

THOR is bombastic and in your face enough without such enhancement, but I bet kids of all ages will eat it up in whatever format.



More later...