Central Intelligence

Black spies matter.

(2016) Spy Comedy (New Line/Universal) Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, Amy Ryan, Danielle Nicolet, Jason Bateman, Aaron Paul, Ryan Hansen, Tim Griffin, Timothy John Smith, Sione Kelepi, Dylan Boyack, Thomas Kretschmann, Megan Park, Slaine, Annie Kerins, Nate Richman, Robert Woo, Kumail Nanjiani, Phil Reeves, David Stassen, Rickey Eugene Brown, Kadian Clarke. Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

 

When we’re in high school, we have dreams and inspirations – and sometimes nightmares. The people we become are generally not the people we thought we’d be. And as for those who we went to school with, they often turn out much different than we imagined as well.

In high school, Calvin Joyner (Hart) was the golden boy. In fact, his nickname was the Golden Jet. A star athlete, picked the most likely to succeed and going out with the head cheerleader Maggie (Nicolet). He had everything going his way. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Robert Weirdicht (Kelepi), fat and a little bit off-kilter, the target of every bully in school. During a pep rally, he’s dragged naked out of the shower and paraded in the buff in front of the entire school. Calvin, maybe the only kid in school who could stand up for him, does so, covering him with his Lettermans jacket. Weirdicht runs out of the gym and never returns to school again.

Twenty years later, Calvin is not the success he thought he’d be, even though he married his high school sweetheart and is working as an accountant which pays pretty well. His 20 year high school reunion is approaching and he doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to kill the legend of the Golden Jet by showing up as a mid-level accountant.

Then he gets contacted by a gentleman named Bob Stone (Johnson) who turns out to be Robert Weirdicht. He asks Calvin if he wants to get together for a drink and although Calvin is reluctant, Maggie insists and so Calvin meets Bob, completely shocked at the way Bob turned out; nearly a foot taller than Calvin and built like a pro wrestler (see what I did there?) which is humiliating in and of itself.

As it turns out, Bob is a bit of a renegade. Okay, he literally is a renegade agent for the CIA. He is being sought after for stealing classified data and murdering his partner (Paul). Bob claims he’s been set up, while the agent in charge (Ryan) is pursuing him relentlessly. Is Bob the hero he seems to be or is he using Calvin in a fiendish plot to get revenge on a world that treated him shabbily?

Well, you should be able to figure that one out without much effort. Central Intelligence is just the latest in a string of spy comedies which feature top comic actors putting themselves through action hero paces. In many ways this is the most promising of the lot because there’s a genuine action hero in the center (Johnson) and quite frankly, he’s pretty adept at comedy as well. Right alongside him is maybe the most popular and successful comic working in 2016.

And quite frankly, these two aren’t the problem. In fact, the two of them are a good reason to go out and see Central Intelligence; their interactions are that good. They make a surprisingly strong comedy team with Hart often playing the straight man role, surprisingly enough. Johnson is outstanding, with his hero-worship and his social awkwardness and his somewhat jaw-dropping eye-popping geekiness. Johnson has oodles of charm and he brings all of it to bear on the audience, who are helpless before it. The dichotomy between him and Hart also proves to be a comedy gold mine.

Sadly, the two are serviced by a plot that is predictable and at times nonsensical. While Jason Bateman has a fairly substantial role as the school bully 20 years later, the other big cameo by Melissa McCarthy is a blink-and-you-missed-it affair. There are plenty of gun fights but very few gunshot wounds, as you might expect from a PG-13 movie.

There is a running gag about the John Hughes classic Sixteen Candles whose references might escape modern audiences (younger viewers might be well-advised to watch that movie before going out and seeing this one) that is pretty funny and constitute some of the most well-written portions of the script. Somewhere, Molly Ringwald is smiling no doubt.

Sadly, those moments are more isolated than I would have liked and the best scenes in the movie are mainly given away in the trailer. Calvin spends way too much time protesting he’s not in, whereas Bob spends too much time being oblivious. You would think that a superspy would be a little bit more savvy.

I think that the studios were hoping this would be the beginning of a franchise and by all rights it should have been. Sadly, the writers went for safe and ended up with a bland, generic comedy that is adequate for its needs but not exciting enough to stir genuine love from the audience. Definitely not a waste of your time, but not time well-spent either.

REASONS TO GO: Hart and Johnson make a fine team. The Sixteen Candles references work well.
REASONS TO STAY: The best moments are in the trailer. Not very inventive.
FAMILY VALUES: Lots of crude and sexually suggestive humor, some brief nudity, plenty of action violence and a smidgen of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first time Warner Brothers (who owns New Line) and Universal have jointly distributed a film since 1996 (Twister).
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/15/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 68% positive reviews. Metacritic: 52/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Spy
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: Independence Day: Resurgence

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The Two Faces of January

The Crete airport has a pretty out-of-the-way lost luggage location.

(2014) Thriller (Magnolia) Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac, Daisy Bevan, David Warshofsky, Yigit Ozsener, Karayianni Margaux, Prometheus Aleifer, Socrates Alafouzos, Ozcan Ozdemir, Nikos Mavrakis, Ozan Tas, Omiros Poulakis, Evgenia Dimitropolou, Peter Mair, Pablo Verdejo, Brian Niblett, Mehmet Esen, Kosta Kortidis, Okan Avci, James Sobol Kelly. Directed by Hossein Amini

In Tom Ripley, novelist Patricia Highsmith created a character whose moral compass pointed straight at himself; Ripley remains fascinating in the imagination not just because of his ability to become a chameleon but because he takes acting in his own self-interest to the ultimate.

While Ripley doesn’t appear in the latest film adaptation of a Highsmith novel, his ghost is hanging around the fringes of the themes here. Things start out pleasantly enough; Chester MacFarland (Mortensen) and his stunning wife Colette (Dunst) are vacationing in Greece in the summer of 1962. They wander around the Acropolis relying on Greek guidebooks that may or may not be terribly useful when they come upon an American named Rydal (Isaac) who is a tour guide who speaks fluent Greek. He’s also a bit of a hustler, although Colette doesn’t realize it. Chester however, wouldn’t trust the guy to mow his lawn although he does humor his wife and allows her to hire him to guide them the next day.

They spend a pleasant day together and if his eyes linger on the beautiful young Colette a little bit too much and if she is a bit too taken by him, it seems to be harmless. However, Chester is far from the innocent that his summer white suit would indicate. He left behind a mess back in the States of fraud and larceny which catches up with him in his five star hotel room that night. When that ends badly, it is inadvertently witnessed by Rydal who helps Chester clean up a literal mess. It becomes necessary for Chester and Colette to make a hasty getaway but they are unable to pick up their passports from the hotel, without which they can’t leave the country.

Rydal takes the couple to Crete where they can hide out. The ex-pat knows a guy who can forge some documents and while they wait for the passports to arrive, they try as best they can to lay low but once again things don’t go according to plan. Now paranoia and suspicion rule the day and getting out of Crete won’t necessarily be the end to their problems.

Amini, who earned his Hollywood stripes as a writer, chooses a writer’s writer to adapt for his first feature as a director and does a credible job for a debut. He sticks to a basic visual style, relying on his cinematographer Marcel Zyskind to bring the Greek and Cretan landscapes to life. The charming villages, the urban ruins of Athens, the desolate landscape of Crete all play a role in the action.

It doesn’t hurt that each of these lead characters are essentially flawed and make morally-challenged decisions, and yet we still root for them and identify with them. In a sense, there are no villains here; each character is his or her own villain. If there is a villain, it’s Lady Luck; if it wasn’t for bad luck, poor Chester wouldn’t have any luck at all.

Mortensen has ended to choose obscure roles after his breakout performances in the Lord of the Rings trilogy; I had predicted big stardom for him at the time but Mortensen hasn’t really taken roles that would further his profile, preferring to stick to small budget indies and lower profile films with roles that interested him. More power to him. Dunst has taken a similar career path, with only the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy having that kind of major star profile. She has since taken meatier roles like this one. Isaac, on the other hand, is an emerging star who is about to embark on a major franchise of his own, the new Star Wars trilogy. I wouldn’t be surprised though if he stayed the same course that Mortensen and Dunst have taken on.

Highsmith doesn’t exactly write empty-headed upbeat novels so don’t go into this looking to escape. It requires a certain amount of brain power and a willingness to accept behaviors you might not ordinarily approve of; these are after all desperate people far from home and if you understand that, you’ll understand why they act the way they do.

There are some twists and turns, not all predictable. However I must admit that the movie seems to slowly lose steam during the last third and maybe it’s the somnolent atmosphere of a sleepy small town in Crete or the hard-baked prairies of the center of that island. It just doesn’t bustle with energy is what I’m saying.

This is a much better than average thriller, although maybe not as gritty as noir lovers might like, nor as fast-paced as the average thriller junkie might be comfortable with and yet this is one worth seeing if you get the chance, which Central Florida filmgoers can if they hurry.

REASONS TO GO: Terrific triumvirate, every one likable. Gorgeous Greek scenery.
REASONS TO STAY: Loses momentum over the third act.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some violence (none of it bloody), some sexuality, a bit of foul language and plenty of smoking.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the directorial debut of Amini who is best known as a writer for such diverse films as Killshot, Drive and Snow White and the Huntsman.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/8/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 82% positive reviews. Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Third Man
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Big Eyes