Posts tagged CIA
Safe House – Movie Trailer
Feb 12th
Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds star in the action-thriller Safe House. Washington plays the most dangerous renegade from the CIA, who comes back onto the grid after a decade on the run. When the South African safe house he’s remanded to is attacked by mercenaries, a rookie operative (Reynolds) escapes with him. Now, the unlikely allies must stay alive long enough to uncover who wants them dead.
Johnny English Reborn – Movie Trailer
Oct 26th
In the years since MI7’s top spy vanished off the grid, Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) has been honing his unique skills in a remote region of Asia. But when his agency superiors learn of an attempt against the Chinese premier’s life, they must hunt down the highly unorthodox agent. Now that the world needs him once again, Johnny English is back in action. With one shot at redemption, he must employ the latest in hi-tech gadgets to unravel a web of conspiracy that runs throughout the KGB, CIA and even MI-7. With mere days until a heads of state conference, one man must use every trick in his playbook to protect us all. For Johnny English, disaster may be an option, but failure never is.
“Hanna” Bad Premise, Worse Execution
May 12th
(“Bad Premise, Worse Execution”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Hanna is one of those movies whose filmmakers believe they are being clever by making the movie come full circle from beginning to end, just as they must have believed they could make the story more interesting by omitting important details.
And the premise is so simple that the one-sentence pitch to studio executives could easily have been “Sixteen-year-old girl as James Bond.”
Then just to turn the story on its head even more, the Bad Guys in this movie are usually the Good Guys in a James Bond film.
Hanna is played by Saoirse Ronan, who received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of the “evil sister” in the 2007 Atonement.
When we first see Hanna, she is living with her father, played by Eric Bana, in a cabin in the wilds of northern Finland, where they have been living for 15 years and he is training her for some sort of life-or-death mission.
In fact, he tells her, “She won’t stop until you’re dead. Or she is.”
“She” is Marissa Wiebling, played by Cate Blanchett using a Texas accent that is so phony it is laughable, and Hanna’s father and Marissa have a history that we get only a glimpse of in one flashback.
We eventually learn that Hanna’s father used to be a CIA agent until something went wrong, and that is why he and Hanna are hiding out in northern Finland, because Marissa and her fellow CIA agents are still searching for them.
However, when Hanna believes she is ready, she activates a signal that identifies her location to Marissa, and Hanna’s father then takes off after confirming with Hanna where they will meet in Berlin.
So, Hanna is captured, and then the movie gets even more ridiculous.
Hanna escapes from Marissa in a gruesome and unbelievable scene, but she discovers that she is in Morocco, and she must somehow get to Berlin without any money.
In other words, the movie becomes an absurd chase movie.
As a matter of fact, the movie goes from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous and then to be so ridiculous that it is laughable and finally forgettable.
The premise is bad, and the execution is worse.
Hanna is a quite elaborate rendition of a simple story made more complicated by the omission of significant details.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”