Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

I keep wanting to call this Jack Ryan: Shadow Hunter, but that sounds like some kind of Assassin's Creed game.

Just the other day I was telling someone how it bugs me when a movie shows you a cityscape with obvious landmarks, but then still bothers to put the name of the city on the screen, as if you were born yesterday.  Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit does this at least three times in the first few minutes.  I can understand an American not immediately recognizing London, but when you see the Statue of Liberty a few minutes later, do you really need to see "New York City" displayed?  Are we that stupid?  Yes, that's rhetorical.  This is done many times during the film, letting us know the names of buildings or airports despite having no bearing on the story or provide any useful insight.  Does it matter what airport they're at when we already know their destination?

Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) is attending school in London when he sees the reports of the attack on 9/11.  He enlists in the Marines, but is shot down on a mission and has to go through vigourous physical therapy to regain the ability to walk.  During physical therapy he meets a medical student, Cathy (Keira Knightley).  They flirt, but part ways as she graduates.  He's also watched and then recruited by Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), who wants him to be their inside man on Wall Street looking for financial patterns that may point to enemy action.

We fast forward 10 years and Jack's on Wall Street doing exactly that.  He's living with Cathy now, and you'd assume they hooked back up shortly after the previous events, but later there's a reference in the movie to that they've only been together for three years.  Did they reconnect after 7 years?  How'd they meet up again?  Plus, I'm a little disappointed that we jumped so far ahead, and don't get to see any of Jack's training or anything like that.  More than a few times details that would have helped invest in the characters or story were skipped or glossed over.

Anyway, Jack discovers a pattern of suspicious cash movement, and he's sent to Moscow to investigate and perform an audit on the company in question.  He's barely in Moscow ten minutes and someone tries to kill him.  I've heard of people not liking auditors, but this takes it to another level.  I guess Jack's on the right path, eh?

Shadow Recruit has an interesting enought setup, but then pretty much goes into cruise control.  It's not that it's paced poorly, or is boring, but theres nothing here you haven't seen before.  It has all the typical spy thriller tropes where plot holes and coincidences occur to always help the hero at the right moment.

Misunderstandings between characters occur when there was no reason to lie or mislead.  For example, he lies about seeing an old movie, which was really just a cover to exchange data with a CIA handler.  Cathy finds the ticket stub, and tricks him to see if he'll lie about it.  Instead of just telling Cathy he caught a film at lunch, he fumbles through a bad lie that only makes her more suspicious of him.  Plus, what kind of CIA agent wouldn't do a better job of covering his tracks, by you know, throwing the ticket away?

There's a moment during the climax where Jack is fighting a guy by a van, and then in the next scene he's driving that van, which probably should be undrivable due to water damage, with the guy he was just fighting now in the back trying to detonate a bomb.  How did that happen?  Did something get cut from the film?  Did my mind totally wander while it skipped ahead?  Also, why didn't either of these guys have a gun?  Would been pretty useful in that situation.

After a somewhat disappointing performance in Star Trek Into Darkness, I thought Chris Pine bounced back well here.  It was a good role for him and was one of the brighter spots of the film.  I always enjoy Keira Knightley, but there's not much to her character for her to really sink her teeth into.  Kevin Costner was goo, too, but was on autopilot for the most part.  Again, it's not an issue with the performances, but more that none of the characters are all that interesting.  Probably the most disappointing is Kenneth Branagh as the movie's villain. He's not particularly menacing, and they had to go out of their way to have him kill or beat his henchmen just so you'd think he was crazy.  About the only thing you learn about him is that he has advanced cirrhosis.  Just a generic movie bad guy otherwise.  Even his plan, which involves manipulating the dollar to collapse the U.S. economy, doesn't exactly instill any kind of primal fear.  When the plan is outlined, it's a bunch of financial mumbo-jumbo, and even Costner's character asks for it to be dumbed down when explained to him.

Also, the only available showtime to me was on IMAX, which I would definitely not recommend.  There's zero value to seeing this on IMAX, and I'm shocked that it's even being offered as an option.

If you really need your spy thriller fix in the middle of January, then I suppose you could do worse than Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.  It's an entertaining, but very paint-by-the-numbers thriller without a lot of originality or creativity.  I'd call it a solid rental and not something you need to rush out and see.

2.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

Premium Rush (2012) - Movie Review

I need to start riding my bike more.

I was a little worried about seeing this. First, it's a late-August movie, and with a name like Premium Rush, you might think this was a movie about surfing or a new flavor of Mountain Dew. Even when a movie stars two of my favorite actors, The JGL and Michael Shannon, you have to wonder if this is just a late-summer paycheck. Actors have to pay their mortgages, too. Plus, the trailers didn't really look all that compelling. I mean, it's a movie about a mike messenger getting chased all over.

Fortunately, Premium Rush is an entertaining film. It's a throwback movie if there ever was one. Veteran director and co-writer David Koepp managed to take a pretty basic premise and turn it into a fun, fast-paced thriller.

The title does serve as a double meaning, as it's both a reference to rush delivery (actually mentioned by name in the film), and the rush you get from riding your bike at high speeds where the wrong move can get you killed. Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a recent law school grad, has no interest sitting behing a desk all day or wearing a suit. He prefers to chase the rush he gets from riding, and makes a meager living as a New York City bike messenger. He has a philosophical view of his riding and enjoys the risk. He's such a purist that he rides a low tech bike with no gears or even brakes, because breaking gets you killed.  Wilee wouldn't have it any other way.  His fellow co-workers, and girlfriend Vanessa (Dania Ramirez), all think he's nuts and needs to slow down.  He's the best at what he does though.

A friend of his, Nima (Jamie Chung), contracts him to make a small delivery, but this immediately puts him in the cross hairs of Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon), who really wants what he's delivering.  Monday relentless pursues Wilee with the tenacity of a Terminator, and Wilee doesn't understand why he wants it so bad.

As far as thrillers go, you aren't going to get any real surprises here.  The story stays on it's bike path from beginning to end.  More is revealed through a series of flashbacks that show you the events leading up to now, but also give you a break from the action.  You do get a rush from the film, as it's extremely fast-paced and you get invested in what is going on.  Similar to what I said in my The Expendables 2 review, I left this movie wanting to dust off my bike and take it for a spin. I'm not going to be doing any of the crazy moves seen here though.  The bike stunts here are great, and the way some scenes were shot you do get a real feeling on the speed and danger of it all.

Another really cool thing they did is at times they'd show some scenarios where Wilee would have to map out his route or plan out which way to go when it looks like he was running out of room.  Then they show you how each scenario would have played out.  It's similar to stuff you've seen in Sherlock Holmes or even Next.  They don't overuse this, so it doesn't get old or feel like too much of a gimmick.  I thought it was a nice touch.

It's ironic that main character's name is Wiley, as in coyote (he even makes a joke about it), as he's really The Road Runner being chased around.  He's always narrowly escaping, while pulling of moves that would get a normal person killed.  It felt like something you used to watch on Saturday morning. In addition to being chased by Monday, Wilee is also pursed by a bicycle cop, and harassed by a co-worker, Manny (Wolé Parks), who not only wants to prove he's better than Wilee, but he wants his girlfriend, too.

Speaking of his girlfriend, that's one of the elements that felt forced here.  From the opening moments, there's conflict between Wilee and Vanessa, and it just felt thrown in to add drama. They do a really weak job of explaining why they are having issues, and by the end everything is fine again without any discussion between the two.  Also, the way some of the characters were related to each other was a little clunky.

What makes this movie stand out is that is does have a good cast and the performances are strong.  The JGL always delivers and this is no exception.  I absolutely loved Michael Shannon's performance.  His character is totally ridiculous, but he's so completely over the top and corrupt that it was just fun to watch.  It's the kind of role where I don't think a different actor would have been able to pull it off.  I also enjoyed Wolé Parks as a foil for Wilee.  He's another character that could have felt thrown in there and unnecessary, but it worked.  Former The Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi has a small, but funny role as the dispatcher for the messenger service.

After I saw The Apparition a few days ago, another moviegoer expressing his disappointment in that movie simply said, "I should have gone to that bike movie instead."  Yes, we both should have.

Premium Rush is fun film with lots of great action, some unexpected humor and good performances.  If you've ever wondered a Road Runner cartoon acted out by humans looked like, this would be it.  It caught me by surprise and I enjoyed it.  It's a nice movie to catch if you're bored this weekend and just want something fun to watch.  Totally worth a matinee.

3.5 (out of 5) Death Stars