Spy review

Melissa McCarthy stars in Paul Feig’s new action-comedy “Spy” and unbelievably they turn out one of their strongest collaborations yet. I say unbelievable because McCarthy’s post “Bridesmaids” career has been a bit hit or miss with successes like Feig’s cop-comedy follow-up “The Heat” and commercial and critical flops like last year’s “Tammy,” an awkwardly pitched passion project co-written by the actress and her husband.  But what makes “Spy” mostly work is that it knows that McCarthy is an actor’s booster-pack. Having worked for years on television’s “Gilmore Girls” she understands scene dynamics and how to play off of her costars in a way that makes her look good and them look better.

McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, the eyes and ears of a suave CIA operative named Bradley Fine (Jude Law). While he’s sneaking around undercover, Susan, who secretly carries a school-girl crush on the agent, tells him how to get in and out of sticky situations via headphone microphone on her computer screen, miles away in a safe rodent-infested office. After Fine is taken out of commission and it is revealed that his killer Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne) is hunting other known operatives, Susan’s inconspicuous demeanor and her lack of field experiences makes her the ideal candidate to track down the whereabouts of a dangerous arms dealer named Sergio De Luca (Bobby Cannavalle).

Though McCarthy is the only actor featured on all the posters and the marketing materials mostly show her undercover as an elderly woman in a curly wig and giant glasses, this is not a “Big Mamas House” styled, lazy, costume-comedy. The scenes of her in frump-drag are minimal and the comedy generally comes from the conversational, matter-of-fact riffing performed by the eclectic cast. Jason Statham does his best work in years playing against his own stereotype as a hard-ass killer, delivering some of the strongest and funniest dialogue in the movie. Likewise, the catty exchanges between McCarthy and Byrne are bound to become meme-ready in the coming months, with a crop of shareable Youtube clips.  Allison Janney is reliable as ever as their stone-faced superior and British actress Miranda Hart is entertaining in small doses, until they begins to overuse her.

The film is quite funny, and it knows that it is, and sometimes the problem with self-referential comedies is that they can become too enamored by their own appeal. Unfortunately “Spy” sometimes suffers from the over-exploiting its best jokes. Peter Serafinowicz' horny Italian spy character who can’t keep his hands off of the annoyed protagonist is a cheap gag that never works and almost never ends as soon as it’s introduced.

Sometimes the film can’t decide when to make McCarthy the strong, capable action hero or the bumbling, flakey butt of the joke. McCarthy is game to do either to the best of her abilities, but nobody behind the camera seemed aware that these portrayals clang against each other in the context of the story.  After we’ve seen her help Jude Law through very difficult situations, later in the film there are other moments where she makes the most bone-headed choices for no discernible reason other than to activate a joke.

Nevertheless, even though “Spy” stumbles occasionally, it always managed to surprise me with sharp dialogue, great performances and a real commitment to its filmic references.

Grade: B-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2015

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit review

                  At one time you could have called the superhero movie a niche or facet of the action genre, but as time has gone it has become the premier trend, whereas once, the spy thriller might have been a more profitable action trope. Films like “Goldeneye”, “Mission Impossible”, and of course the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan espionage features like “Clear and Present Danger” and “Patriot Games” were considered a kind of thinking man’s blockbuster that showcased a masculine hero who, while resourceful and highly skilled, wasn’t endowed with extra-human abilities. Instead, these films exploited the political and social paranoia’s of their time and blew them up to dramatically satisfying heights. But since then the world has changed and so has the demographics.

                Jack Ryan, once played by an aging Harrison Ford, is now embodied by Chris Pine, also known as the younger, sexier Captain Kirk in the recent “Star Trek” reboots. In the new origin story “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”, Pine and his director Kenneth Branagh, the actor/director known primarily for his on-screen Shakespeare adaptations, come together to dig up the grave of the spy-game potboiler for a younger, perhaps less-patient audience. Their attempt, while hardly groundbreaking or innovative in any way, is more or less successful, though not without a few uneven results.

               While getting his PHD at Cambridge University in England, Jack Ryan witnesses the terrorism of 911 and enlists as a Marine, where he’s later injured in Afghanistan.  He works tirelessly to get back on his feet with his physical therapist turned fiancé, played by Keira Knightley, and it’s at this time that he is approached and recruited by a vetted member of the CIA (Kevin Costner). His special mission is to work undercover as a wall-street banker, where he can keep an eye on shadowy trading between countries that could lead to another attack on American soil.

                Branagh steps out from behind the camera as Viktor Cherevin, a Russian oil tycoon who plans on building a pipeline to Turkey, where he can sell vast amounts of company stock, which, when triggered by another American bombing, will destroy our crippled economy…or something like that.

                The plot of this movie is silly and so socially aware and stuffed with recent news-bites that Jack Ryan practically becomes a CIA Forrest Gump; conveniently connected to 911, the middle-eastern wars, sleeper cell terrorism, Wall Street, and the global economy.  Most of the tension is built by scenes where characters are looking at computer screens waiting for stock to sell or jump-drives to load, and, for the most part, none of it makes much sense. But this isn’t supposed to be believable, it’s supposed to be fun, and for the most part it is, just not when it thinks it is.

                Branagh works through the scripts lazy plotting and decides to direct this in the style of campy, Roger Moor era James Bond film. His acting work as the villain is so delightfully over-the-top he might as well be stroking a white cat with every scene he’s in. The conversations the dubious Branagh and Pine as our likable rooky hero are attention grabbing and well-rehearsed, as well as the dialogue driven scenes shared by Pine and Kevin Costner as his CIA confidant and Knightley as his worried, out-of-the-loop lover.  The action set-pieces however are handled with only enough skill to keep the movie afloat, but are mostly minor and unmemorable.

                As a classically trained actor and director Branagh wisely turns this by-the-numbers actioner into a character-centric B-movie. It isn’t a remarkable or note-worthy film, but it basically works as a light and agreeable attempt at a pre-Bourn espionage throwback. The screenplay ultimately prevents it from hitting the franchise-generating bull’s-eye it’s aiming for, but the film will likely entertain just fine as a stay-at-home Netflix time-waster.

Grade: C+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2013