The Amateur: Could be more professional

The Amateur (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong action violence and some profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.13.25

Robert Littell’s long reign as an espionage author got an early start with this 1981 novel, which jumped to the big screen that same year, as a tidy little thriller starring John Savage, Christopher Plummer and Marthe Keller.

 

Despite his best efforts, Charlie (Rami Malek) simply lacks the killer instinct required of
a good CIA field agent, as his handler, Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) points out.

Despite — or because of — its fidelity to Littell’s book, most critics pooh-poohed a plot they found laughably contrived. (Hey, I liked it anyway.)

Perhaps bearing that in mind, scripters Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli have retained only the bare bones of Littell’s plot for this remake, while modernizing events with all sorts of computer modeling, surveillance technology and satellite spycraft that didn’t exist in the early 1980s.

 

Ironically, the result becomes just as unlikely and increasingly contrived, as the solid first act moves into the second and third. That said, director James Hawes and editor Jonathan Amos move events at a briskly enjoyable pace, and everything is anchored by Rami Malek’s richly nuanced and persuasively credible performance.

 

Charlie Heller (Malek) is a brilliant but deeply shy and introverted CIA decoder, who works in a basement office at the agency’s Langley headquarters. He has three passions in life: his work, his beloved wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) and solving puzzles.

 

Sarah is his polar opposite: vivacious and outgoing ... but gently understanding and tolerant of Charlie’s preference for isolation. She therefore isn’t surprised when he declines to join her for a trip to London, to attend a conference.

 

His world collapses, upon arriving for work the next day. His Langley superiors — Moore (Holt McCallany), head of the covert Special Activities Center; and Alice O’Brien (Julianne Nicholson) CIA director — inform him that Sarah has been killed by terrorists who invaded the London conference.

 

(Even at this moment, when compassion seems called for, McCallany plays his role so aggressively, that he may as well have “Doing And Concealing Bad Stuff” tattooed on his forehead.)

 

Standing in O’Brien’s office, Charlie wilts like a stalk of old celery. Malek’s performance is shattering: the epitome of loss, grief, shock and a level of rage that has no outlet.

 

Back at his desk, as the next few days pass, Charlie employs his computer skills to identify and compile detailed dossiers of the four terrorists involved. But when he presents this information to Moore and his close colleague Caleb (Danny Sapani) — head of the CIA’s Nuclear Proliferation branch — Charlie is stunned to discover that a) they already know; and b) apparently aren’t doing anything about it.

 

Moore threatens Charlie with insubordination, if he doesn’t drop the matter.

 

Wrong move.

 

By coincidence — and thanks to a mysterious, heavily encrypted online source dubbed Inquiline — Charlie has gained possession of damning information about unsanctioned covert CIA operations. Armed with some of these documents, he blackmails Moore and Caleb into sending him to “agent training school,” so that he can travel overseas, track down the terrorists, and execute them himself (!).

 

As an added threat, Charlie promises that — if anything should happen to him, in the meanwhile — copies of said documents will be distributed to major news outlets.

 

He’s sent for a crash course in field work, under the tutelage of Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), a retired CIA colonel who coldly assesses Charlie’s lack of physical prowess. Even so, Charlie proves quite adept at some tasks — improvising tactical explosives, as one example — but utterly hopeless at even holding a gun, let alone shooting one.

 

One of Fishburne’s many fine moments concerns the latter, when Henderson challenges Charlie to point a loaded gun at him ... and, despite teeth-gritting effort, he can’t.

 

“Some people are killers,” Henderson finally says, gently. “You aren’t.”

 

Charlie eventually heads to London and then — following his own leads — Paris, where he knows how to find the first terrorist.

 

And we’re off to the races.

 

Nolan and Spinelli concoct clever — if improbably elaborate — ways for Charlie to proceed with his mission. On the other hand, he doggedly proceeds through unfamiliar locales — eventually including Marseille and Istanbul — like a seasoned tourist, which he obviously isn’t, and always is able to determine exactly where to go.

 

Setbacks abound, and it’s frankly amazing that no matter how many times Charlie is forced to abandon his equipment — and everything else — he’s always able to buy a fresh set-up, and continues to have money for lodging, meals and so forth.

 

As if the terrorists aren’t bad enough, he’s soon being followed and attacked from all sides, including the KGB (!). At one point, finally desperate, he reaches out to Inquiline ... about which, I’ll say no more.

 

The film is saved by the fact that all characters are portrayed convincingly by each member of the large ensemble cast. Malek’s delicately shaded performance contains multitudes; he’s thoroughly engaging in every scene. Charlie veers from stubborn determination to lingering grief, and Malek’s expression is particularly heartbreaking when Charlie keeps “seeing” Sarah at unexpected moments.

 

“You should go home,” he’s told, at one point.

 

“I can’t,” he replies, forlornly. “She’s not there.”

 

Henderson’s transformation from compassionate instructor to implacable pursuer is jarring — but not unexpected — and Fishburne makes the guy quite lethal. Nicholson is terrific as O’Brien, unimpressed by Moore’s glib assurances, and clearly underestimated by him. Jon Bernthal is appropriately mysterious as a field agent dubbed The Bear, who owes a debt to Charlie; Michael Stuhlbarg is chilling as Schiller, the guy who led the London terrorist attack.

 

The ubiquitous Adrian Martinez is a welcome ray of sunshine as Carlos, one of Charlie’s CIA techie colleagues, and it’s a shame his role wasn’t expanded.

 

In a droll nod to this film’s 1981 predecessor, Marthe Keller pops up briefly, as a florist.

 

Hawes and cinematographer Martin Ruhe make ample use of the many international backdrops, none more charming than the fishing community setting that dominates Charlie’s time in Marseille.

 

Although this obviously is a check-your-brains-at-the-door thrill ride, Malek and his co-stars make it more compelling than the plot deserves.

And, sometimes, that’s enough. 

Nightmare Alley: Not worth a visit

Nightmare Alley (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong, bloody violence, sexual content, nudity and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.17.21

Mid-20th century touring carnivals, by their very nature, seem … well … sordid.

 

Squalid. Uneasily unpleasant, as if something nasty is happening in the tent around the corner.

 

Although Molly (Rooney Mara) is instinctively wary around charismatic carnival newcomer
Stan (Bradley Cooper), his charm and aw-shucks persistence eventually wear her down.
Which isn't good news...

No surprise, such an environment proved alluring to director Guillermo del Toro.

Nightmare Alley began life as a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham (who, rather disturbingly, in 1962 committed suicide — via sleeping pills — in the same hotel room where he had written the first draft). Dashing Hollywood star Tyrone Power, looking for something meatier than the romantic and adventure roles for which he had become famous, persuaded 20th Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck to buy the rights for him.

 

The resulting film was rushed into production and hit theaters the following year; alas, nobody wanted to see Power play such a morally tainted character, and the movie also endured considerable bad publicity — and moral outrage — due to the story’s squalid elements (quite strong, for the time).

 

History has been much kinder; it’s now regarded as one of the era’s finest film noir entries … a reputation del Toro’s remake hasn’t a chance of attaining.

 

Granted, this new adaptation looks terrific; production designer Tamara Deverell and cinematographer Dan Lausten persuasively establish the late Depression era, down to the grime and foulness; and an atmosphere of impending dread hovers over the carnival setting like a shroud.

 

The performances are uniformly strong, and the characters are riveting, with most of them displaying various shades of corruption. It’s also nice to see del Toro and co-scripter Kim Morgan retain Gresham’s grim conclusion. (The 1947 version “softened” the ending, which is that film’s sole flaw.)

 

Alas, del Toro’s pacing is lethargic and ponderous to a degree that ruins everything.

 

The Los Angeles Times recently ran an article titled “Are movies too long?,” and this one’s a poster child for a resounding yes. The 1947 version knew when to get off the stage; it’s a just-right 111 minutes. Del Toro’s remake is a butt-numbing 150 minutes, with nothing to show for such expansion. Indeed, the additional length actually works against the story’s atmosphere and suspense.

 

That’s a shame, because all concerned otherwise do their best, and the classic elements are in place. Every true noirrequires a louse; a very, very, very bad gal; a second, usually trusting and naïve woman whose virtue will be compromised; and assorted sidebar characters of dubious moral quality.

The Ice Road: Thrills 'n' chills

The Ice Road (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence and occasional profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

This is an intriguing riff on 1953’s The Wages of Fear: Instead of hauling hazardous cargo, these truckers are traveling on a hazardous highway.

 

Mike (Liam Neeson) and Tantoo (Amber Midthunder) watch in horror, as an expanding
pattern of cracking ice rips toward their trucks.

Writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh’s nail-biting thriller is another ideal vehicle (ahem) for star Liam Neeson, who continues to enjoy his late-career status as an action hero. Hensleigh’s script is completely formulaic — he leaves no cliché behind — but the crisply executed result is sufficiently entertaining.

Events begin deep underground, when part of a Northern Manitoba diamond mine collapses, trapping a couple dozen miners. Rescue requires specialized, heavy-duty wellheads that aren’t on site, and can’t be delivered via plane. Speed also is of the essence, as the miners — able to communicate topside, by rapping Morse code on an exposed pipe — have limited oxygen.

 

The sole option is to haul the equipment with big rigs, and the fastest route — the only route that’ll make it in time — is the “ice road” across frozen Lake Winnipeg.

 

In the dead of winter, that wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s early spring, and the frozen ice isn’t nearly as thick; it may not be solid enough to handle the weight.

 

Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburne), the trucking operator in charge, puts out a call for seasoned drivers willing to risk their lives. By coincidence, just across the border in North Dakota, Mike (Liam Neeson) and his brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas) are between jobs. Steady employment eludes them, because Mike tends to beat the crap out of anybody who teases Gurty, who suffers from PTSD impairment.

 

Goldenrod isn’t in a position to be choosy, particularly when Gurty reveals genius mechanical talents. The only other taker is Tantoo (Amber Midthunder), a feisty young Cree woman with a tendency to get arrested while participating in First Nations protests. She’s also a highly capable big rig driver, and determined to participate because her brother Cody is one of the trapped miners.

 

The plan involves triple redundancy: three trucks — Goldenrod driving the third one himself — each carrying the necessary equipment. Ergo, only one needs to make it. 

 

(One could argue that three heavily laden trucks are much more likely to break the ice than a single vehicle, but you can’t apply that sort of logic to this sort of story.)

Wrath of Man: Dismay of viewer

Wrath of Man (2021) • View trailer

Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless violence

By Derrick Bang

I miss Guy Ritchie.

 

I miss the British director who burst onto the scene with snarky crime thrillers such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, populated by arch characters with improbable names such as Hatchet Harry, Barry the Baptist, Franky Four Fingers and Bullet-Tooth Tony, all bumping each other off in ways that would have been appalling, were they not so darkly hilarious.

 

As "H" (Jason Statham, second from left) begins his first day on the job, Bullet
(Holt McCallany, far left) introduces him to Hollow Bob (far right) and
Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett).

That Guy Ritchie attempted to go mainstream a decade ago, with uneven results, by tampering with pop-culture icons such as Sherlock Holmes and Napoleon Solo (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)

 

Happily, the original Guy Ritchie returned with 2019’s The Gentleman, another cheeky crime thriller leavened by the writer/director’s caustic sense of humor.

 

Alas, that Guy Ritchie is AWOL in his new film. Wrath of Man hasn’t a single wry chuckle in its dreary 118 minutes; it’s nothing but a grim revenge saga with far too much collateral damage to be enjoyable on any level.

 

It’s not fun, merely tedious. No snark. No attitude.

 

It’s also a disappointing reunion with star Jason Statham, who was introduced — nay, detonated — in Lock, Stock and Snatch. Statham also isn’t fun here; he’s merely a grim rage machine, in an under-developed role that could’ve been played by any number of grade-C action stars.

 

The sole Ritchie touch evident — in a script co-written with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, and adapted from the 2004 French thriller Le Convoyeur — is the clever, non-linear structure that teases us with partial details, until finally Revealing All during the third act.

 

But that’s hardly enough to hold our interest, when surrounded by so many one-dimensional characters.

 

Maybe the Los Angeles setting is to blame. Ritchie needs to operate in his native Merry Olde, where British wit is an institution. Everybody knows that Los Angeles has no sense of humor.

 

Anyway…

 

After a deadly ambush on one of its armored vehicles, L.A.-based Fortico Securities replaces one of its slain guards with tight-lipped Patrick Hill (Statham), who immediately is dubbed “H.” He barely passes the necessary driving, behavior and shooting tests administered by the veteran Bullet (Holt McCallany), who nonetheless speaks up for the new recruit, despite the doubts of depot manager Terry (Eddie Marsan).

 

Fortico handles the transport of major cash sums that — for one reason or another — can’t be processed via banks (a good option for marijuana dispensaries). 

 

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back — Deftly paced popcorn thrills

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, plenty of action violence, and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.21.16

All right; he’s growing on me.

Lee Child’s fans know darn well that — as a physical specimen — Tom Cruise couldn’t be further removed from the author’s depiction of honorable loner Jack Reacher. (Cruise: 5-feet-7, 148 pounds; Reacher: 6-feet-5, 210-250 pounds, with a 50-inch chest.)

Having learned that Samantha — a girl who might (or might not) be his daughter — is in
danger, Reacher (Tom Cruise) and Turner (Cobie Smulders) rush to her home ... only
to find signs of violence, and no trace of the teenager.

In Child’s novel Never Go Back — on which this film is loosely based — Reacher is said to have “a six-pack like a cobbled city street, a chest like a suit of NFL armor, biceps like basketballs, and subcutaneous fat like a Kleenex tissue.”

Sounds more like The Incredible Hulk, right? On his best day, it would take three Tom Cruises to make one Jack Reacher.

That said, I’ve gotta give Cruise credit (even if that seems superfluous, since his name pretentiously appears three times in the title credits, before the movie even starts). He’s an impressively fit 54-year-old, and he handles this film’s action scenes and stunt work with reasonable élan. And he’s still a dynamic sprinter, which he demonstrates a few times here.

(Tom Cruise action movies always have running scenes. He obviously believes he looks good doing them.)

All right, all right; enough joshing. Cruise’s second outing as Reacher is more satisfying than its 2012 predecessor, thanks to engaging supporting characters who do much to humanize the narrative. The primary plot is supplemented by a solid secondary mystery, and Cruise has softened the at-times laughably stoic manner he gave Reacher the first time.

I credit director/co-scripter Edward Zwick, who has a history of blending action epics with compelling character development, in films such as Glory, Blood Diamond and Defiance. Zwick and Cruise also worked together on The Last Samurai.

They chose this film’s source material wisely. Cruise’s first Reacher film was based on Child’s ninth novel, One Shot, a rather grim affair that did little but drip with testosterone, and frequently emphasized the many ways that Cruise didn’t look or sound like Reacher. This new film is adapted from Child’s 18th book — Zwick sharing scripting credit with Richard Wenk and Marshall Herskovitz — which is a much shrewder choice, with better mainstream audience appeal.

Zwick opens with a prologue of sorts, which allows Cruise to display the calm assurance with which he greets all perilous or life-threatening situations. It also establishes his connection to Maj. Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), who has inherited his desk at the headquarters of his former unit, the 110th MP in northeastern Virginia. Zwick deftly establishes that the two have been trading intel and phone calls for awhile, but have yet to meet.

(In Child’s series, this long-distance relationship begins with the 14th book, 61 Hours.)

Sully: Flies high

Sully (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly for dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.9.16

Coulda-woulda-shoulda.

We are a species of second-guessers.

With precious seconds ticking away, after losing both engines to a bird strike, Capt. Chesley
"Sully" Sullenberger (Tom Hanks, right) and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) contemplate
several equally unpleasant options, every one of which carries the risk of killing
hundreds of people.

Even when something has been done properly, with the desired outcome, we often wonder: Might things have concluded even better, with a different set of actions?

Far worse, of course, is when an optimal result is challenged by others who question our judgment. Armchair quarterbacks who insist that, really, it should have gone down this way.

Human nature. Quite infuriating.

At first blush, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger would seem to be the last man on Earth to be confronted in such a manner; he is, after all, the hero who glided the disabled US Airways Flight 1549 Airbus A320 into a flat-out miraculous pancake landing on the Hudson River, on Jan. 15, 2009, saving the lives of all 155 passengers and crew. As any pilot can verify, water landings aren’t nearly as “soft” as a dive into a swimming pool; depending on speed and angle of impact, it’s more like slamming into a brick wall.

Who, then, could argue with Sully’s actions, given the results?

Ah, but that’s the hook behind director Clint Eastwood’s new film, which gains its dramatic tension from a crackerjack script by Todd Komarnicki, based on Sullenberger’s best-selling book, Highest Duty. Komarnicki and Eastwood manage a seemingly impossible feat, by injecting suspense into a narrative whose outcome we already know.

But that’s the point: Most folks don’t know the full story. Granted, everybody watched the amazing events on that January afternoon in 2009, many of us glued to TV sets. But while it’s true Sully saved all 155 people, he wasn’t able to save the plane itself ... and — sad to say — neither Airbus nor its insurance underwriters were going to take the loss of a $70 million aircraft lightly.

Ergo, the second-guessing, and this film’s suspense, as Sully — played with gravitas by Tom Hanks — and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) are grilled, after the fact, by National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators who insist, armed with computer simulation test data, that the plane could have returned safely to the nearest La Guardia runway, or one at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport.

And we can’t help wondering: Could it be true?

At which point, Komarnicki and Eastwood have us hooked.

Blackhat: A crumpled cyber-joke

Blackhat (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Rarely has a film worked so hard, on so many levels, to be dumb, dull and mean-spirited.

I cannot imagine why an A-list director such as Michael Mann attached himself to Morgan Davis Foehl’s thoroughly ludicrous, bonehead-stupid script. Nobody with an ounce of savvy could have seen gold in this dross; if green-lighting this sort of puerile junk truly represents corporate thinking, then Universal Pictures is run by monkeys.

On the run and trying to evade pursuit in Hong Kong's colorful market district, our heroes
— from left, Nick (Chris Hemsworth), Lien (Wei Tang) and Jessup (Holt McCallany) —
quietly make their way to the safety of a modest apartment. But can they be truly safe,
in a world where everybody's movements are tracked by cameras and computers?

Foehl has worked as an assistant editor, mostly on television, for roughly a decade. Blackhat is his first script.

It shows.

He makes every rookie mistake, and quite grandiosely: from a relentless barrage of computer-oriented techno-babble, to seriously — seriously — misjudging the impact of his malicious tightening of the dramatic screws. Tuesday evening’s preview audience grew downright hostile as we hit the third act, and with good reason; we weren’t merely betrayed, we were sucker-punched.

Not that Mann doesn’t deserve his share of the blame. Under better circumstances, a thriller dealing with cyber-terrorism should be able to ride the obvious promotional bump delivered by headlines still echoing from the recent Sony hack. Indeed, the serendipity is almost spooky, on par with 1979’s The China Syndrome being released 12 days before the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.

But we know Blackhat is destined to be a stinker, when Mann opens his film with a protracted, electron’s-point-of-view sfx ride that purportedly shows what it’s like, deep within a server’s countless circuit boards, when a rogue command activates. The whole sequence feels like a what-the-hell cast-off from Tron, and it brings this new film to a grinding halt ... before it even starts.

And, to compound the felony, Mann soon indulges in this tedious exercise a second time.

A bloated thriller that clocks in at a butt-numbing 133 minutes can’t afford that sort of self-indulgence; it denotes a director who isn’t in control of his own movie. Which, in Mann’s case here, quickly becomes obvious.