Tag: Thriller

Of all the movies coming out this week, The Drop was the one I was most excited for (Outside of Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt? but who knows when I will get to see that one!). Mostly because I didn’t have to see a trailer for it at all. Not a once. I got to go in mostly blind and just see what kind of story it would give me.

Exciting! All I knew was the main actors, setting, and some sort of thriller maybe.

So, to make sure no one gets to experience it like me, let me tell you about the plot and stuff!

It also features some guy who you might really want to see in movies before it is too late.

“Ain’t sayin’ no names or nuttin.”

Although they didn’t explicitly tell me the setting, I can almost guarantee this one takes place in Boston, in a drop bar. What is a drop bar? Well, a lot of illegal money changes hands in the city. Gambling, hookin’, drugs, you name it. Not the type of money you can just deposit without drawing questions from the tax man.

In order to keep the money safe, it is stored at a different bar every night, a huge network of them. Very few people know which bar will be before the day of and it is seemingly random. It helps prevent theft of that money and keeps the bars in check too.

This movie is about one of those bars, a drop of cash, and the people who work there. Namely, Bob (Tom Hardy) the kind and slightly slower bartender and his Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), the owner/former owner.

It also features a neighborhood lady Nadia (Noomi Rapace), a kind of weird maybe ex (Matthias Schoenaerts), the mob (Michael Aronov), a detective on the case (John Ortiz) and a puppy. Yes, a damn puppy.

The puppy is of course secretly key to this whole damn thing.

This one was it. This is the last movie that James Gandolfini will ever appear in, as the only other thing with him in it not released is apparently a part in some never picked up pilot for Criminal Justice. And I think he went out on a good one. Enough Said was only okay, but The Drop? This is a good movie.

Speaking of actors in the movie we are talking about, what in the fuck Tom Hardy? His voice is so weird and unique in this movie. Once the opening narration started, I imagined it belonged to anyone but Tom’s character, but there you go. Whether it is accurate to the area, I don’t know (or give a fuck). It was interesting and it really seemed to work.

The story itself is a slow moving one and one that seems worth the wait. Arguably, the characters are all just so odd or weird on their own that even though it is not a comedy, the bizarness of the situation and accents kind of make it amusing. You know, in a darker or weird way.

Despite it wrapping up the story pretty nicely and being unique, I think I’d want some more of this setting. Fuck it. Give me a sequel.

But then again, in a year I might forget all about this movie. Hard to say. Yay Tom Hardy.

Found footage films get a lot of hate. So much that now when any movie is filmed by a character in that movie, that is what it is called regardless of the reason. Most of the time it is a simple style reason. But because The Blair Witch Project was first, that places this silly title on to the genre. Then people get nitpicky, especially if no one finds the footage. I had to note in my review of Into The Storm that just because it was camera, doesn’t mean that it was found footage, but hey, people still raged.

For what it is worth, it looks like As Above, So Below night be a found footage standard horror film too. Found Footage films that are true to the word are annoying, because they usually mean no survivors. Knowing there is no survivors can be annoying. Back in the day, lots of people survived horror films. More and more recently they seem to want to make it one or no survivors.

Oh well. Hopefully based on the setting it is at least full of history?

And hopefully this is the biggest hole in the movie.

I guess it is based on history. History…and magic!

Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is a young archaeologist and scholar, with several degrees. More than one would expect for someone so young. Her father helped pick out her career path and was big in the field. However, some say he went mad trying to discover the true location of the Philosopher’s Stone. That’s right. They want immortality.

Well, after going to Iran and finding out some Rosetta Stone like artifact that would allow her to decipher a code, she heads back to Paris where the one and only Nicolas Flamel died. Rumor has it that Flamel achieved immortality by being a cool alchemist and discovering the Philosopher’s Stone, which also made him super rich! And since then people have wanted to find him or find the stone to get some of that wealth action.

Scarlett isn’t doing it for money. She is doing it for science. Along with Benji (Edwin Hodge), a man who wants to make a documentary on the search, and her good friend George (Ben Feldman) (who can also translate some stuff for her), they are going to scour Paris looking for it!

But, below Paris? That means the Catacombs! Which have only been partially explored still. It is really easy to get lost down there and lose track of where you are going. Would be scary without a guide to get them to where they need to go. Like Papillon (François Civil) and his two friends (Ali Marhyar, Marion Lambert)! They know those catacombs and the superstitions behind them.

Pro Tip 3: Crawling on bones is probably not bad luck.

For what it is worth, only parts of this movie could be considered found footage. Multiple cameras and people with cameras dying, you are going to have cameras being left behind. So technically someone can find those.

I also thought at times things were pretty scary. Based on the score and framing you can tell when something spooky was about to jump at you, so I might have looked far to the side of the theater, or behind me to make sure no one was about to jump on me in real life. Going to a theater in the slums that is a real fear.

Also, at times the movie felt a bit intelligent. They were doing a lot of smart things, which is good because the two main leads are supposed to be smart characters. So that is nice. A lot of leaps of logic by the end though.

As Above, So Below was a strange movie. It was interesting in that it was unique and felt more like a thriller early on. I had some scares. By the end it was pretty dang crazy and felt harder to follow. Everything they were doing made sense, sure, but as to why it made sense is the bigger question.

Overall, a good use of the “found footage” and an okay movie.

Whoa, when did the first half of September turn into shit? Not making biases or anything, but there are not a lot of releases for Labor day weekend or the week after it. We don’t see big titles until mid September. What is this? January? Because even January has big titles, they are just usually big shitty titles. This is just…just nothing coming out for a couple weeks.

The November Man is the only real big release coming out for Labor Day Weekend, which makes it like an anti-Memorial Day weekend. There is a horror, but that is a lot more limited and didn’t really have a lot of advertising.

So, like it or not, The November Man, coming out in September, becomes the biggest release. Even if it looks like an awkward shitty spy thriller that might have gone straight to DVD, it gets to be the big draw to the theaters. Boooo. Booooo.

Full of generic action scene cliches, if we are lucky.

The November Man. Why is Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) called that? Well, according to the trailer, the CIA used to call him that because after he came through, nothing lived. Fuck. That has got to be the worst/cringe inducing reasoning for a nickname that I have ever heard. Seriously. Nicknames are organic things that are kind of on the spot based on a small reference. Does the nickname make sense? Sure. Can a normal person organically come up with that without a lot of thought? Fuck no. Even after describing that to someone, they might not get it right away.

So Devereaux used to be in the CIA and was, I guess, a killing machine. A few years ago, while training a young operative Mason (Luke Bracey), a kid got killed during an operation, and Deveraux decided to call it quits. He just wanted to retire in Switzerland, like any sane person.

But now, present day? His old handler, Hanley (Bill Smitrovich), has called him back in. They have to extract a woman out of Russia. This woman has information on Arkady Federov (Lazar Ristovski) who is primed to be the next president of Russia. This information she has is a game changer. And she asked for Devereaux by name.

Factor in a Belgium social worker (Olga Kurylenko), some other CIA people (Caterina Scorsone, Will Patton), a reporter (Patrick Kennedy) and a Russian assassin (Amila Terzimehic), and you got yourself a political action thriller.

“Okay Pierce, can you give us a grimace?”
“Can I?!!?”

I will be the first to admit that I didn’t hate all of the the movie. Despite the beginning of the films best efforts to make it look like a shitty Luc Besson movie, eventually the movie started to make some amount of sense. A little bit. It definitely has its shares of twists and turns, if you are into that sort of thing. And I guess, for the most part, they make sense.

That is a stretch. This film has a lot of plot holes. When there are too many twists, early character actions don’t always make a lot of sense. We can chalk it up to deception, but…people aren’t that smart.

Follow up to that. The main character is not a hero in anyway. He kills a lot of people. A lot of US citizens in the CIA, who aren’t bad guys at all, but don’t know what is going on and are just following orders. He feels no remorse either, just killing everybody on every side. It is terrible. Speaking of killing, the ending series of events was also bad because he could have killed one of the main legit bad guys and didn’t. It would have solved his problems and not put the people he cares about in harms way.

Just a mess of a movie. It had some interesting parts. But a cringey title, bad hero, and bad decisions for smart characters turn me completely off.

I don’t know how people reviewed the movie Sin City when it came out, I just know that Sin City: A Dame To Kill For will be pretty hard to review.

Sin City itself was pretty polarizing. I think overall it was on the positive side of the spectrum for most people (including me). The art style was something very different and took awhile for some people to get used to. It was also pseudo copied with The Spirit, which a lot of people hated (and those people also suck).

But a sequel has long been in development and long been clamored for, as the original came out in 2005. Almost took 10 years to get another installment. It has to live up to a lot of pressure, so I hope it can deliver.

Now with more nakedness than ever before.

Sin City is a land where dreams come true. Assuming your dreams involve corruption, drugs, sex, betrayal, murder, lawlessness, crime, death, and other synonyms. Shit is weak. Shit is weak everywhere.

Marv (Mickey Rourke) is still running around, being a badass. If you like him, good news, he is basically in every plot line.

Like when Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes to town, looking for secretive revenge and wanting to use his elite poker skills to do it. Or when Nancy the never naked Stripper (Jessica Alba) wants to enact revenge on the death of Hartigan (Bruce Willis) from the first film. Or when Dwight (Josh Brolin) has to go an save Ava (Eva Green) from an abusive relationship, taking out an inhuman body guard Manute (Dennis Haysbert).

So, basically Marv is everywhere. Yay continuity?

Also featuring others, like Rosario Dawson and Powers Boothe bringing back their old characters. Or like Jamie Chung, taking over someone else character. And some people in much smaller roles, like Ray Liotta, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven and Christopher Lloyd who is like 150 at this point.

If only there were angels out there for him to help out?

More action! More death! More sex! Is Sin City: A Dame To Kill For a step in the franchise? Or is it just too late?

Hard to say what the reason is, but this movie felt incredibly lack luster for me. Maybe it is because when Sin City first came up, it was before comic book movies really started to amp up their games. Before The Dark Knight before the Marvel films. Because for the most part, this story / set of stories feels very familiar, yet still distant.

Maybe I am annoyed at just how connected they wanted everything to feel? I liked the disjointedness of the first film, just a few short stories and then another.

Maybe it is just the quality of the stories? For what it is worth, there are basically three plot lines. The middle being the longest and most complete, or at least featuring the most characters, but even it dragged by the end. The “first” plot with JG-L didn’t feel interesting, and Alba’s felt not as epic as it was going for.

Maybe it is that the style feels stale after all this time, with the 3D elements never really enhancing it like I had hoped?

Maybe I don’t know. The only thing I know is this movie felt like a great disappointment. But also, maybe I am just getting older.

Yay disaster movies!

They are a very polarizing. For the most part, they will never really be scientifically accurate. They also have been getting further and further into B-Movie territory, thanks to The Asylum and SyFy making intentionally shitty disaster flicks. But for the most part, it is has been awhile since an actual disaster movie has been released.

Before Into The Storm, maybe 2012 was the last one? At least natural disasters based on natural occurrences. None of that zombie disaster movie shit. Just straight up angry weather and earth.

I will admit, for the pre-screening of Into The Storm, they did throw a little party together. Free food (and it was good), drinks (alcohol too), a lot of prizes for tweeting things, and a “4D” experience. Basically, they had a 2 minute scene from the movie turned into a video game thing, hooked up to an Oculus Rift, with fans blowing hard at you. And honestly, that was really cool. I would like to think this event didn’t effect my bias any, but throwing it out there just in case. And here is me looking cool in the booth.

I need some sort of sucks joke here. Scott, don’t forget to put a joke here.

Silverton, Oklahoma. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Not just because of what happens to it in this movie, but because it’s a made up town and I don’t want to live in LA-LA land.

On this tragic almost end of Tornado season, a high school graduation is taking place! This doesn’t effect our main family too much, in that the boys are in Junior and Sophomore years. Donnie (Max Deacon) is our closest thing to a main character, so let’s start with him. He is shy and nerdy, likes a girl Kaitlyn (Alycia Debnam Carey). Kaitlyn is freaking out about an internship, her video for it is corrupted, so she has to reshoot it TODAY. Donnie is supposed to record it with his brother Trey (Nathan Kress), because their dad is the vice principal (Richard Armitage). But hey, he has a chance to help a hot girl out. So hell yeah, abandoned old factory time.

We also have storm chasers!

Led by Pete (Matt Walsh), a storm documentary guy who has gone almost all season without a single tornado. Pete has made a tank on wheels, bulletproof glass, steel plating, braces that can help stabilize the vehicle up to 170 mph winds, and a 360 turret camera. His goal is to record the inside of a tornado. But his hired meteorologist, Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies) has been miss after miss. They have lost their funding, but he is willing to try one more. There are two storm fronts that seemed to have merged and Allison’s gut is telling her Silverton. They also have camera crew people / helpers with various personalities (Arlen Escarpeta, Jeremy Sumpter, Lee Whittaker).

But that isn’t enough comedy, damn it. So we have two local rednecks, one a self proclaimed dare devil (Kyle Davis) and his brother who forced that title upon him (Jon Reep). Yes I know what I just said. Fuck danger, they are going to be famous on YouTube.

“Johnson! How are we going to make this tornado movie more threatening?”
“I don’t know, make a tornado 1000x its normal size?”

Notice how I didn’t really mention that tornadoes fuck up some shit? Mostly because that is obvious. Figured telling you the plot, because this movie surprisingly has plot, would be way more informative.

I will say that I don’t think the type of things that happened in this film are scientifically accurate at all, but then again, I don’t study bitchy weather. If there had to be one big issue with the movie it is that it is rated PG-13. With that rating, the death count ended up being a lot smaller than one would expect. Now there were some pretty awesome and well shown deaths, don’t worry on that. Just. The number was small.

The film is also highly entertaining. Only about 90 minutes in length, but for the most part it is action packed. Outside of character introductions early on, and one particular touching moment from Max and Alycia mid movie (which yes, I might have shed a tear for), there was always some sort of panic/danger/tornado to cause some thrills and drama. And what more can I want from a disaster movie?

I will note that Richard Armitage is supposed to be a 65 year old man in this movie. What? He looks like he is 40 at most. Regardless, his career path is terrible if he is still just some high school VP.

Here is an additional note. A lot of people seem to complain about this style of film. Hand cameras and what not filming the entirety of the scenes. However, just because a movie is filmed that way does not make it Found Footage. Complaining that the footage is never found our pieced together afterwards is stupid, if the movie never claims to be a found footage movie. It is just a different style of film making that can be incredibly unique. Remember that.

I vaguely remember seeing the trailers for Splice many years ago. I remember it looked weird, would probably be a bad science horror, and quickly then forgot about it.

So now, why am I watching Splice? Well, I needed an emergency filler film to review today and I happened to own it.

Why do I own it? Not sure. I probably picked it up when the local Blockbuster closed, probably bought the Blu-Ray for only a $1-2. A price so small that I could put it on my shelf and risk watching it sometime in the future.

And here we are! Roughly 2.5 years after buying it, a review on Splice!

This was originally planned to be an awkward sequel to Jurassic Park, I think.

Science is crazy! It can literally do anything, as long as there is a will and way and some smart people with money backing them.

Which is what is happening at the NERD research group. Dr. Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) and Dr. Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) are science partners and real life sexy time partners. They are also making animal hybrids, creating new species. It isn’t a pretty sight, as you can see above. But once they successfully got a weird male species and a weird female species, both that they created, to mate? That is when they felt pretty great.

Clearly the next step is getting some sort of human hybrid too. The possibilities of their research are limitless. It can be used for…well, growing spare body parts I guess. Or other weird gene shit. But guess what?! Their funding is getting shut down by the guys upstairs (Simona Maicanescu, David Hewlett). Da fuq!

Well, as any scientist knows, they just have to show them the results to get the funding back. So, just a test, just to see, they do it anyways. They spliced together human and animal DNA. Then begin a series of steps that lead to the formation of Dren (Delphine Chaneac), an animal human hybrid. Which animal? Eh, just vague assortment of other animal characteristics. Lets get crow a tail, some wings, some tentacle thing, some gills. You know, everything you might need to be a successful hybrid in the world.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Brandon McGibbon is also in this movie as the brother of Clive and he also is a scientist on their team. Everyone is super close!

But when dealing with Dren, make sure there is enough space for Jesus.

Ah, bad science movies. To be fair, there isn’t a lot of actual science in this movie. To me it felt like someone was coughing during the important moments of a presentation, so the how or why gets kind of lost but the talk keeps going. They don’t even try, is the real point I am making. Zoom in on some beakers, and some pictures of chromosomes, add in some science talk and move on.

Of course, not only is the science depicted badly, but everyone in the movie is a scientist or runs/funds a science lab. All of them are terrible at their jobs too. We assume these people got advanced degrees and they are bumbling around like idiots!

So for the most part, all of that is bad. What about the good?

Well, eventually in the movie, the plot became a bit more interesting when we had the adult form of Dren. A lot more cooler things could be done, including quite a few uncomfortable scenes. I was pleased that this was more of a thriller than a horror film. I remember the trailer basically taking place all in a small lab room, which made it seem like a small cast survival horror and just seemed ridiculous. But they are able to try and flesh out their characters a bit and give some reasoning for their actions. At least a few.

It had some tense moments, and a lot of bad ones, but overall told an okay story. Not one that is really scary in any way, just uncomfortable at times.

Movies that examine the human condition and push “normal people” to their breaking point tend to excite me and scare me at the same time. Whether those are based on real or fictitious events. For example, one of the better known examples of a movie I am talking about would be The Experiment, a fictionalized retelling of the experiment that was actually done with similar results.

That is terrifying.

Exam isn’t based on a real test, but it takes elements from those sorts of psychological thrillers.

It could also be considered a bottle epi-uhh. Bottle movie.

Eight people are looking for a job. After passing grueling tests/tasks, none of which are shown or explained, they are the final eight people who are in consideration. There isn’t a lot of knowledge about the job details, but it requires being a leader, making tons of money, and changing their life forever.

We don’t know their real names, each candidate was just given a number, a desk, a paper, and a pencil. One of the candidates decides to call each person by their descriptive name of skin color or hair color and they seem to stick. So we have White (Luke Mably), Black (Chukwudi Iwuji), Brown (Jimi Mistry), Deaf (John Lloyd Fillingham), Asian (Gemma Chan), Blonde (Nathalie Cox), Brunette (Pollyanna McIntosh), and Dark (Adar Beck).

There is one man who tells them the rules, The Invigilator (Colin Salmon).

1) No trying to communicate with him or the guard (Chris Carey) at the door.
2) No spoiling their test.
3) No leaving the room.

They have 80 minutes to answer one question and one question only. Then, you know, the movie plays out.

“How does paper even work, really?”

Exam early on was able to keep my interest. There wasn’t a lot of music, it was just people talking and a lot of mystery up in the air. The viewer watching will want to pay close attention to everything going on to try and figure it out before the movie explains it all. It excelled there.

I was disappointed this wasn’t a real time movie. It is 100 minutes long, and an 80 minute test. They had a few minutes before the timer, and a few scenes after it. It would have been so much more creative to just literally give us an 80 minute exam. But no, time was sped up and skipped on multiple occasions, I think creating a more disappointing movie atmosphere.

Secondly? The ending was kind of…well…dumb in my opinion. They will explain everything to you, but even when they do, it still doesn’t make too much sense. It is the result of trying to be too clever and thus potentially just angering your viewers instead of making them feel enjoyment.

So there you go. An okay acted movie, with a lot of build up, but it all just flattens by the end. Still enjoyed the tense moments and human nature, however.

Richard Ayoade is most well known as being the not Chris O’Dowd character from The IT Crowd.

He has had the occasional other gig, but that is where most people know him. But hey, he also wants to be a director, so for his (up to this point) biggest release, he has given us a movie called The Double, which is lighting up the indie film circuit.

The Double is described by some people as a black comedy. But fuck that, this is a drama thriller.

Which is shown clearly by the use of camera lens and creepy stalking.

Let’s talk about Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg). He is a nice guy, does his job, does it well, but rarely gets acknowledged in his company. His boss (Wallace Shawn) practically ignores him despite his record, but whatever.

But a series of events leave him feeling a bit frazzled. He loses his ID badge, and gets a lot of crap for it. He has to tutor the bosses daughter. And a new hire at the work, James Simon (Jesse Eisenberg) looks identical to him. Even his voice. Other people don’t seem to notice, but it is uncanny.

James Simon, the new guy, is good at social skills which Simon James is not. However, Simon James is good at the job and doing his job. They do some of that twin switcheroo stuff to help each other out, but when James Simon starts to take things for granted, Simon James is going to find himself struggling just to feel like he exists.

Also, there is a girl involved too, of course. Mia Wasikowska, an employee at the company.

Just two dudes, not talking to each other in a public restroom. As it should be.

The Double is one of those film titles that is pretty common. This is the second The Double, I have reviewed, the first one being an absolutely terrible thriller and should promptly be ignored.

So. The first The Double is like Simon James, and this The Double is like James Simon. I am doubling up on The Doubles.

Regardless, this The Double is an incredibly weird movie. Not zany antics weird, but all of it. Everything was done deliberately in this film, from the lighting, to the camera lenses used, the angles. You can tell a lot of work went into it.

This is also the type of movie you can’t half-ass while watching it. A lot will fly right by you if you do, and you might not understand the ending in the slightest. But for those of you who are diligent, overall this movie is a very rewarding experience with some interesting twists. Might even be the type of movie you want to watch…twice.

Wooo, Oldboy remake! I watched the original a few days before Oldboy came out to theaters, then…surprise! They changed their mind to make it limited release on Thanksgiving week, and of course, it didn’t come close to my area. Fuck those guys. Damn it, damn it.

So now it is March, and I can finally see it. I still saw the original, just like 4-5 months ago instead of right before hand. Oh well, whatever. Based on the trailers, it looks like they might have changed some of the main elements around, so it shouldn’t be a complete copy.

This time, the hammer is actually his hammer, and not his penis. `

Basic jist, Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin) is an asshole. He was married and had a child, but they got divorced, and now he is a scumbag ex who doesn’t pay child support and lives sale to sale. One night, after a sale, he goes to visit his friend Chucky (Michael Imperioli), he gets abducted! He thinks it is a hotel room for sex, next thing he knows, the scenery outside is fake, and he is stuck in this small room with a TV.

Twenty years go by with him in that room, getting fed 3 meals a day and occasionally getting gassed for random reasons. He finds out soon after he was captured that his wife was murdered and the blame fell directly on his life. Shit. Now his daughter, 3 years old, who barely knew him, is getting raised by another family.

So what happens after 20 years? He gets released. No questions asked. Huh. Okay. Why? I guess that is the question.

Also starring Elizabeth Olsen (A lot of her), Sharlto Copley, and Samuel L. Jackson.

That’s right, after all that, I just want to show you a very hairy Brolin.

To answer the question that people care about, no, not really. The question they were asking of course was “If I saw the original Korean version, should I watch the American remake?”

That is a bit unfortunate. A lot of it was the same, not scene for scene, but basically every step of the way is the same. Remember that long fight scene from the side in the original? It is back in this one, but…shorter I think, and with more cuts. Remember the ending? Of course you fucking remember the ending. Well, it is very similar. Arguably there is one big plot point different, but in the grand schemes, it is the basic same story.

So, on its own? It is okay. Definitely not as powerful as the first, and really, knowing the entire story kind of tames this one for me. Samuel L. Jackson didn’t feel as good as the Korean counterpart. Sharlto Copley played a villain and uhh, he has been a better villain in other movies. It was pretty meh. In general, the end has a “too many coincidences” vibe to it, so the ending doesn’t even give as much pay off as the Korean version.

I think I also expected a bit more from Brolin here, who I guess is officially a hit or miss actor. Sometimes he is on, sometimes he isn’t. Tis a shame.

Oldboy remake? Could have not been done. I would have expected more different from this type of movie, not a basic copy.

Isn’t it strange that Tom Clancy died, and within the next two days, they released the first trailer for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit?

Isn’t it strange that this is the first Jack Ryan movie to be made not actually based on any of Tom Clancy’s books, just the character itself, as a sort of reboot?

Skydance Productions certainly has some questions it needs to answer…

You can run Skydance, but you can’t hide. Tell us what you did with Clancy!

In this story, Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) was working on his PhD in Economics in London when 9/11 happened. Filled with patriotism, he decided to enlist in the marines, stopping his PhD, to help save freedom. Unfortunately, he faces an injury in Afghanistan and gets booted out early, but not before proving himself to be a hero.

After a long time in rehab, he is asked to join the CIA by Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner). He doesn’t want to make him an agent. He just wants him to finish his PhD, work on Wall Street, and monitor things in case terrorists plan to hijack Wall Street or use its money for terrorism or…something. Pretty simple. He also starts dating his physical therapist Cathy (Keira Knightley), because that is totally okay.

Turns out, years later, Jack actually finds something and becomes important@ Good old Russia is not only planning a terrorist attack, but an economical attack at the same time to bring us back to the Great Depression era and cause riots throughout the country! Ah, Russia. I missed you as a villain. Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh) is a proud Russian man, and will do anything to help his country through their times of woe. So of course he is willing to carry out this plan for them.

Darn it. Now Jack has to become operational, no longer just sitting as a desk job. He has to fight for his life! All the while his girlfriend is freaking out that he kept the CIA a secret. Clearly she just wasn’t as patriotic as Jack.

You have to be super patriotic to leg kick a black man.

On an unrelated note, I realize that Jack Ryan is an established and long running character, but I am tired of Jack being used as the main character name in movies. Last year we got Jack The Giant Slayer, Jack Reacher, and Oblivion, which said Jack about thirty times in the trailer alone. I am all Jack-ed out. I am pretty sure no one is named Jack anymore.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit ended up being better than I thought. Honestly, the trailers made it look a bit ridiculous, and almost implied that they were trying to play him off as some sort of super human with a huge brain and brawn. I guess I didn’t give enough credit to Branagh, who directed Thor, and also starred as the main villain in his own movie. That has got to be a cool feeling.

The thriller aspects for the movie are what really did it for me. They really wanted this to be a smart, intellectual thriller, kind of spy versus spy kind of deal. So they made the main character and villain smart. They had great chemistry together, a sort of battle of wits.

But I also left feeling that it all wrapped up too easily and too nicely. There was only one real “spy like” point in the movie, everything else was basically your standard mindless action. The villain lost far too easily.

If this turns into an official rebooted franchise, I do hope they replace Pine. I didn’t actually hat him in the role, but he was the fourth person to play the role in five movies, so I’d rather keep the actor carousel going.