He’s a Juicy Tenderfoot. He’s the…
Vidiot
Week of June 13, 2014
No man with helicopter keys gets left behind. First up…
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
The first thing a new CIA recruit should know is what C.I.A.
stands for.
Thankfully, the green agent in this action/thriller has his
acronyms down.
An injured solider, Jack Ryan (Chris Pine), is recruited by
a seasoned CIA operative (Costner) to join the Agency as an undercover analyst.
Assigned to Wall Street, Ryan scrutinizes the stock market
for terrorist activity.
When he does detect an anomaly, it turns out to be a Russian
loyalist (Kenneth Branagh) plotting America’s economic demise.
What’s worse, Ryan’s fiancée (Keira Knightley) becomes
suspicious of his activities and gets involved in his mission.
A reboot of Tom Clancy’s seminal spook, Shadow Recruit is a
middling entry into the franchise’s anemic catalogue.
While Pine’s version of the astute agent is adequate,
Knightley’s American accent and Branagh’s clichéd Commie villain routine
undermine the already slow moving narrative.
Incidentally, Wall Street CIA agents have stock tickers on
their guns. Yellow Light
Non-Stop
The easiest way to tell if there is an air marshal on your
flight is to yell out: Bomb!
A better way, as the air-terrorist in this thriller finds,
is to start killing crewmembers.
An alcoholic air marshal (Liam Neeson) aboard a non-stop
flight across the Atlantic receives a text from a passenger stating that he
will kill someone every 20 minutes until he gets $150M.
Determined to neutralize the mysterious threat, the marshal
starts targeting suspicious passengers and interrogating them.
But when evidence comes to light that the marshal may be the
terrorist, passengers (Julianne Moore, Jason Butler Harner) and crew (Michelle
Dockery, Lupita Nyong'o) panic.
An intriguing concept with a tragic lead and tons of
close-combat sequences, Non-Stop seems poised to please.
Unfortunately, the game’s perpetrator isn’t as earth
shattering as hoped and the acting can be flighty.
By the way, more dead passengers means more elbow
room. Yellow Light
Adult World
The best part of working at an adult bookstore is the great
customer base you get to pepper-spray nightly.
Surprisingly, the X-rated video renters in this dramedy are
quite innocuous.
A college graduate with no prospects in her chosen field of
poetry, Amy (Emma Roberts) eventually answers a want ad for a porn store clerk.
Under the tutelage of fellow employee Alex (Evan Peters),
Amy learns the ins and outs of the adult entertainment and writes her prose in
her spare time.
By chance she encounters her idol, erstwhile poet Rat
Billings (John Cusack), who begrudgingly becomes her mentor.
But her drive for recognition quickly alienates her new
family.
Not as prolific as it wants to be, Adult World does benefit
from Cusack’s involvement but he is not enough to carry the clichéd laden
coming-of-age script.
Furthermore, any poet worth a damn isn’t into pornography,
they’re into pills and booze. Red Light
***Jack Ryan Sr.***
Patriot Games
CIA retirement packages should always include low-level
government secrets that the retiree can sell to the Russians.
Unfortunately, the former agent in this thriller is dealing
with the Irish.
On vacation with his wife (Anne Archer) and daughter (Thora
Birch), ex-CIA agent Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) thwarts the kidnapping of the
British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
During the skirmish, Ryan kills the brother of one of the
IRA members (Sean Bean), who vows revenge.
He makes good on that promise when the Secretary visits
Ryan’s family home in Maryland.
Unfortunately for the IRA, Ryan hasn’t forgotten how to
neutralize a foreign threat.
The second installment - and first star Ford in the titular
role - Patriot Games replaces its predecessor’s intrigue with white-knuckle
action for a more satisfying, yet less cerebral, follow-up.
As for how to get the IRA off your trail: lead them to an
Orangemen convention.
He’s Lower Classified. He’s the…
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