Review: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Official Tagline: At the height of the Cold War, a mysterious criminal organization plans to use nuclear weapons and technology to upset the fragile balance of power between the United States and Soviet Union. CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB agent Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) are forced to put aside their hostilities and work together to stop the evildoers in their tracks. The duo's only lead is the daughter of a missing German scientist, whom they must find soon to prevent a global catastrophe.

Written by: Lionel Wigram & Guy Ritchie

Directed by: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Hugh Grant

I have been looking forward to seeing The Man From U.N.C.L.E. after seeing the first preview a few months ago. The scenes made it seem like a fun action, spy movie and you know how much I like spy movies. I must also disclose that in my study of the James Bond films and the espionage / spy genre, I have watched some of the old The Man From U.N.C.L.E. television series. Plus the fact the late Ian Fleming [creator of James Bond] had a hand in creating the original series doesn’t hurt my interest level either.

I really enjoyed The Man From U.N.C.L.E., I found it to be a fast pace, fun action adventure movie. The main writers, Lionel Wigram & Guy Ritchie did a good job of creating a story of how U.N.C.L.E. was formed and how the two top agents Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) became a team, which is something the television series never did. This type of plot usually has two main characters who are enemies at first, but who eventually come to respect and value each other and this film does too, but it works here. This isn’t always easy to do in a film, Wild ,Wild West is an epic fail at attempting to take a 1960’s spy television series and translate to the big screen and the main reason was the two main characters never jelled as a team. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. makes it work and the performances of Cavill and Hammer go a long way in creating two very different characters who learn to trust and appreciate each other.

Director Guy Ritchie and crew create a beautiful version of the early 1960’s and the music score helps pull you into the 1960’s groove. The plot is fast pace, without too many holes, but I do think the final outcome of the main plot should have been a little more hands on for our two heroes. I’m not going to give details about the plot, you should see it for yourself, but it is a fun ride and at the end of the movie you find yourself wanting to go along on the next mission with the team to Istanbul [stick around for a few minutes after the credits begin] to see what trouble they can get into. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is not perfect, but is a fun action filled popcorn movie and worth seeing on the big screen.

 Screen Writer Ink

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Review: Barely Lethal

Official Tagline: A teenage special ops agent coveting a "normal" adolescence fakes her own death and enrolls in a suburban high school. She quickly learns that surviving the treacherous waters of high school is more challenging than international espionage.

Written by: Kyle Newman

Directed by: John D'Arco

Starring: Hailee Steinfeld , Jessica Alba , Samuel L. Jackson , Sophie Turner , Dove Cameron

Barely Lethal is light hearted, action, comedy; Stranger in a Strange Land story. Haliee Steinfeld stars as Megan Walsh an orphan teen, trained from a young age to be secret agent 83 in the ultra covert Prescott Academy. Megan is the top agent in the shadowy organization, much to the chagrin of her rival, Heather [Sophie Turner]Agent 84 of course. Megan longs for a normal teen life, but everything she knows about normal teen life has come from movies she has secretly watched while on missions. Movies like Mean Girls, Sixteen Candles and Bring it On have given her a distorted view of high school, romance and life in general.

When a botched mission to capture the evil former Prescott Academy Agent 1,Victoria Knox [Jessica Alba],leaves Megan missing in action, her boss Hardman [Samuel L. Jackson] thinks she is dead. Megan uses her spy skills to create a new identity as a Canadian exchange student and arranges to live with a host family, the Larsons, liberal Mrs. Larson, precocious Parker and uptight Liz [Dove Cameron].Megan's attempts at a normal life through the mine fields of high school, first love and assassins provides the laughs and adventure.

The movie tries to play upon and make fun of the usual conventions of spy films, action movies and of course teen romance movies. Writer Kyle Newman and director John D’Arco succeed to a certain extent and there are some cute and funny scenes in the movie, but I think that if they had went a little further and injected some original jokes and twists , the movie could have been so much better.

The cast does a solid job with the script they had to work with. Hailee Steinfeld and Dove Cameron are both a notch above the material. Jessica Alba seems wasted in her villain role; Sophie Turner doesn’t seem to have much acting range here or in anything else she has been in and no one does a Samuel L. Jackson as well as Samuel L.  Jackson.

Barely Lethal is a cute, light weight movie that is entertaining and should score with the young teen target market but older crowds may find it too light and breezy to sustain interest.

Screen Writer Ink

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Review: Survivor

Official Tagline: A Foreign Service Officer in London tries to prevent a terrorist attack set to hit New York, but is forced to go on the run when she is framed for crimes she did not commit.

Written by: Philip Shelby

Directed by: James McTeigue

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Dylan McDermott and Pierce Brosnan

Survivor is an action / thriller flim staring Milla Jovovich as Kate Abbott, the newly installed head of security at the American embassy in London. Writer Phillip Shelby attempts to set up Kate as a rebel by having her ride a motorcycle to work and have some supporting characters talk in hushed whispers about her past as a possible CIA agent. Dylan McDermott is Kate’s boss, Sam Parker who spends most of the film filling us in how what an expert Kate is at security. He has to do this because we see very little evidence of Kate’s superior abilities in the film as she spends most of her time running and looking confused.

The main plot has Kate on the run from the British authorities and her own agency after surviving a bomb that kills several of her coworkers. To make matter worse, Kate is also chased by Nash "The Watchmaker", a ruthless hired assassin played by Pierce Brosnan who always seems to be one step ahead of the authorizes, but one step behind the clueless Kate.  

I know by the tone of my comments that you may think I hated this movie and that is not the case. I think Survivor is a sort of good action movie that could have been a really good action movie if writer Philip Shelby and director James McTeigue had spent some time creating a more logical plot and had made some attempt at making Kate a likeable and capable character. Poor Milla Jovovich is not give a lot to work with and we know from her roles in other movies that she can kick ass on screen, but in Survivor she is more helpless victim, than action hero.

Pierce Brosnan gives a good performance, but even his Nash character, which is built up to be this almost mythical assassin, does some stupid things that seem out of character. That is the main problem with Survivor, the film makers were too lazy to create a solid story, with fully realized characters and instead took easy choices to have the characters do dumb things to move the plot along.

Not a terrible movie, but could have been much better. I guess we will have to look forward to Resident Evil 6 and the next November Man installment to see Milla and Pierce kick proper ass.

 Screen Writer Ink

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Review: Final Girl

Official Tagline: A man teaches a young woman how to become a complete weapon. 13 years later, at 18 she will approach a group of sadistic teens who killed blonde women for unknown reasons. The hunting season begins.

Written by: Adam Prince

Directed by: Tyler Shields 

Starring: Abigail Breslin, Wes Bentley, Alexander Ludwig

I have been looking forward to seeing Final Girl after catching a trailer for the film about six months ago. The idea of a young girl trained to hunt and kill serial killers sounded intriguing. Plus the film stars Abigail Breslin, who always seems to deliver a good performance, so I was happy to finally watch Final Girl last night.

The title Final Girl refers to the horror movie trope where the last female victim in a horror movie usually defeats the monster and is the Final Girl. So with that idea in place, writer Adam Prince and director Tyler Shields create the story of Veronica [Abigail Breslin], who after her parents are murdered, is recruited by a mysterious man [Wes Bentley] and trained to hunt and kill human predators. 

Director Shields was going for a stylized look and feel to the film, almost a Sin City feel, where the characters are “bigger than life.The story takes place mainly at night and judging by the clothing and automobiles, in an ambiguous 1950’s feeling time period. The movie is uneven in many places. I think the creators were trying to walk the line between thriller and comedy, but should have stuck with just one genre. 

A thriller lives and dies by suspense and Shields manages to lose the sense of suspense in almost every scene. When I say comedy, it may not have been intentional and only came in from the over acting of many of the supporting cast, but the staging of the scenes seem to suggest that they were going for humor in many scenes.

Abigail Breslin always gives a good performance and is good Final Girl, except in the action scenes. I think the production should have spent a little money training her for fight scenes, because her character is supposed to have been trained for thirteen years to fight and kill, but in the scenes where miss Breslin is fighting her attackers, she seems like she barely knows how to throw a punch. Wes Bentley does his usual solid performances playing creepy Wes Bentley and Alexander Ludwig isn’t bad being the arrogant, rich pretty boy psychopathic leader of the hipster serial killers.

Final Girl isn’t a bad movie, but it could have been a much better movie if the writer and director had strived to give the film a real sense of danger and suspense. Merging horror and comedy is attempted by many film makers with mixed results and I think the movie would have been better served if it had been a straight horror film. 

Final Girl is worth a look if you like your horror mixed with humor, intended or not.

 Screen Writer Ink

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Review: Burying the Ex

Official Tagline: A guy's regrets over moving in with his girlfriend are compounded when she dies and comes back as a zombie.

Written by: Alan Trezza

Directed by: Joe Dante

Starring: Anton Yelchin, Ashley Greene, Alexandra Daddario

Burying the Ex is a dark comedy / horror movie that is actually a fun way to spend ninety minutes or so. The story follows our hapless hero Max [Anton Yelchin], who works at a Halloween shop with dreams of opening his own shop. Max is a nice guy, too nice. His never seen boss runs over him over the telephone, his stoner, horn dog bother, Travis [Oliver Cooper] takes advantage of his good nature and worst of all, his too hot for him, control freak girlfriend, Evelyn has their future all mapped out for them.

When the story opens we can see early on that Max is restless and unhappy with his relationship with Evelyn and after stumbling into the new horror themed doughnut shop and finding a kindred spirit in owner Olivia [Alexandra Daddario], Max realizes he must end his dysfunctional relationship with Evelyn. Amazing how meeting someone as super hot as Alexandra Daddario can make a guy question his relationship.

 So Max decides to break up with Evelyn, but Max doesn’t like confrontations and dishonesty is the best policy when ending or beginning a relationship according to screenwriter Alan Trezza. To be fair to mister Trezza, almost all comedy, especially romantic comedy, is based on lies or deception of one sort or another and this story follows that tried and true formula.

Max decides to have Evelyn meet him at a park to dump her. Thinking she won’t make a scene in public. On her way there, Evelyn is violently killed right in front of Max. Sure Max feels a little guilty, but now he can pursue Olivia without complications [besides the few lies he has told her], or so he thinks until Evelyn digs herself out of her grave. Things get weird from there.

Director Joe Dante has a sure hand at the controls and the story unfolds at a good pace. The actors all deliver good performances and it was fun seeing the lovely Ashley Greene decomposing as the story went on. The biggest threat to the Suspension of Disbelief for me wasn’t the zombie aspect of the story; it was how someone like Max could attract women who look like Ashley Greene and Alexandra Daddario.

Burying the Ex is a nice way to spend an evening with your honey or as a primer on how not to break up with someone.

Screen Writer Ink

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