Jack Ryan: Ghost War — Insubstantial

Jack Ryan: Ghost War (2026) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for violence and profoanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang 

This seems to be the week for popular streaming shows to spawn feature-length films.

 

I hope the Mandalorian and Grogu are treated with more respect.

 

When a tightly planned operation goes horribly wrong, CIA Deputy Director Greer
(Wendell Pierce, center) must be restrained by MI6 operative Emma Marlow
(Sienna Miller) and veteran CIA agent Jack Ryan (John Krasinski).

Sadly, John Krasinski’s newest Jack Ryan adventure feels like a six-part serial clumsily slashed down to a 105-minute film. Back in the day, I’d have called this a Readers Digest Condensed Movie.

(On a trivial note, the unwisely chosen title evokes memories of 2011’s vastly superior Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.)

 

Director Andrew Bernstein and editor Jason Ballantine’s hyperkinetic pacing amplifies the overall sense of racing to be done with this puppy, a feeling that’s particularly true during the expository, banter-laden initial conversation between “retired” CIA agent Ryan (Krasinski) and CIA Deputy Director James Greer (Wendell Pierce).

 

Honestly, it feels like their chat is being timed by a stopwatch.

 

Three years have passed since the events in Ryan’s fourth-season streaming show, which concluded when he left the CIA for a vaguely defined “civilian job in hedge funds.” His relationship with Dr. Cathy Mueller (Abbie Cornish) is ancient history, and he greets each day jogging along the streets of New York City.

 

Meanwhile, in Dubai, two MI6 agents scramble to crack a computer bank in the upper floor of an unfinished DAMAC tower building. Their goal, under the remote guidance of Nigel Cooke (Douglas Hedge), is to extract evidence of off-books black-ops activity thought to have been shuttered 20 years earlier.

 

Alas, ruthless thugs sent by Liam Crown (Max Beesley) kill them before the information is fully downloaded.

 

(And what, pray tell, is such a sophisticated, unguarded computer bank doing in an otherwise dusty and littered construction site? Well might you ask...)

 

Back in the States, Greer begs a favor of Ryan: Go to Dubai, liaise with Cooke, and collect some intel he’s apparently desperate to share. Ryan reluctantly agrees, and travels with a longtime friend: former CIA colleague-turned-private contractor Mike November (Michael Kelly), quick with a quip, and capable in a pinch.

 

Alas, this “simple” assignment goes south. Cooke is killed, Ryan winds up with nothing but a cigarette pack — and a warning that Greer is “in trouble” — after which he and November are taken into custody by MI6 agent Emma Marlow (Sienna Miller). She’s furious over the way these two Americans have interfered with her surveillance of the situation.

 

Fountain of Youth: Dumb fun at best

Fountain of Youth (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for action violence and mild profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

It’s hard to replicate the directorial panache, sharp writing and star charisma that made Raiders of the Lost Ark so entertaining, but — God knows — people keep trying.

 

Luke (John Krasinski, center left) and his team — from left, Charlotte (Natalie Portman),
Owen (Domhnall Gleeson), Deb (Carmen Ejogo) and Patrick (Laz Alonso) — marvel at
what has just been revealed by a particular painting.

Nicholas Cage did reasonably well, with 2004’s National Treasure, not so much with its 2007 sequel. Angelina Jolie stumbled with both of her Lara Croft entries — 2001 and ’03 — although Alicia Vikander fared better with 2018’s re-booted Tomb Raider. And the less said about 2008’s Fool’s Gold and 2022’s The Lost City, the better.

British director Guy Ritchie now has embraced the challenge, and — having done so well with his two Sherlock Holmes entries, his re-booted Man from U.N.C.L.E. and several stylish crime thrillers — hope sprang eternal.

 

Alas.

 

On the positive side, star John Krasinski brings a lot to the party: boyish enthusiasm, considerable charm, and a lot of well-timed flair for his character’s snarky running commentary. But co-star Natalie Portman is badly miscast; she has no sense of fun, never seems to know how to look or sound, and spends most of the film being a bitchy pain in the ass.

 

And while several of the action sequences are audacious and inventively staged, James Vanderbilt’s clumsy script leaves plot holes large enough to swallow the pyramid where our heroes wind up, in the final act.

 

Ritchie kicks off matters with a bang, as Luke Purdue (Krasinski) cheerfully maneuvers his motorcycle through Bangkok’s busy streets, pointedly ignoring incessant phone calls from somebody named Kasem. He’s then suddenly boxed in by several cars and motorcycles led by the aforementioned Kasem (Steve Tran), who turns out to be a lieutenant in a nasty Thai crime syndicate ... from which Luke has just stolen a painting.

 

Cue a lively, propulsively staged chase through city streets via car, motorcycle and on foot, as Luke finally eludes his pursuers and hops a train, his movements guided via satellite by colleague Patrick Murphy (Laz Alonso), safely elsewhere. Alas, Luke’s planned train getaway is interrupted by the mysterious Esme (Eiza González), who alsodemands the painting, and is accompanied by her own pet thugs.

 

Cue an equally inventive skirmish within the train compartment, employing fixtures, cutlery and everything else not nailed down. Luke once again escapes, this time finally reuniting with Patrick and Deb (Carmen Ejogo), the other member of his crew.

Detroit: City in flames

Detroit (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence, dramatic intensity, pervasive profanity and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.4.17

Very few dramatic films — as distinguished from documentaries — have left me feeling nauseous, in response to the monstrous behavior of human beings.

Schindler’s List is one; that was a quarter-century ago.

Racist cop Philip Krauss (Will Poulter, center left) gleefully takes charge of the lit-fuse
"interrogation" of half a dozen wholly innocent Algiers Motel residents, using the greater
Detroit riot as an excuse to terrorize and torture them.

Detroit is the most recent; that was a few nights ago.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal both took home well-deserved Academy Awards for 2009’s The Hurt Locker; they re-teamed for 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty, their equally mesmerizing portrayal of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, which concluded with his death during a Navy SEAL raid in May 2011.

The latter film lost some of its luster — and probably a few Oscars — due to political sniping over the accuracy of the CIA’s depicted use of torture (an accusation that still seems specious, given that relevant documents remain classified). That controversy tainted a film that deserves better recognition both as a nail-biting drama, and for having gotten “the important stuff” right.

Bigelow and Boal may run into the same problem with Detroit, which would be an even greater tragedy. Although their riveting new film shines a necessary spotlight on a grievously under-remembered tragedy in American history — the so-called 12th Street Riot, which consumed Detroit, Mich., from July 23-27, 1967 — Boal’s script suffers somewhat from tunnel vision, differs at times from long-established eyewitness accounts, and in one conspicuous case succumbs to flat-out speculation.

We experienced this problem with 2000’s The Perfect Storm, which detailed the real-world fate of the fishing vessel Andrea Gail, lost at sea during the nor’easter that developed in late October 1991. The paradox was obvious: Since everybody on board died, nobody could possibly know what actually happened during the boat’s final hours. That didn’t diminish the film’s impact, but one had to acknowledge the contrivance of its entire third act.

Bigelow and Boal obviously are aware of the liberties taken here, and concerned enough to conclude their film with a text block that acknowledges “necessary” extrapolation.

I hope that’s good enough, because it would be awful if Detroit were caught up in petty arguments over detail, thereby obscuring the incontrovertible, big-picture degree to which clearly innocent, mostly black civilians were brutalized by blatantly racist, thuggish white cops during a particularly ghastly incident triggered during the riot.

The Hollars: Love and (dis)harmony

The Hollars (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Family dysfunction is a longtime cinema staple, and for obvious reasons: We feel much better about our own lives, while vicariously experiencing the calamities others inflict upon themselves.

John (John Krasinski), seeking a way to re-connect with his mother, Sally (Margo
Martindale), impulsively sneaks a contraband breakfast into her hospital room one
morning: pretzels and ice cream.

But walking the fine line between reasonable character flaws and exaggerated burlesque is a fine art; the personalities in question must remain credible — at least to some degree — if we’re to sympathize, and therefore consent to any lessons the writer may have concealed within the anguish.

Scripter Jim Strouse manages pretty well, with The Hollars. His chaotic family study is both sweetly amusing and, at times, embarrassingly intimate. The latter derives from the fine work, all around, delivered by a top-notch ensemble cast led by the indomitable Margo Martindale.

The film is something of a personal project for John Krasinski, who directs, co-produced and also co-stars. It’s easy to see what drew him to this material, as Strouse includes some perceptive truths — and uncomfortably accurate interpersonal dynamics — amid this serio-comic study of a family in distress.

John Hollar (Krasinski) left his middle-American small town years ago, to seek his fortune in New York City. He lucked into a devoted — if somewhat insecure — girlfriend, Rebecca (Anna Kendrick); they’re expecting a baby, but remain unmarried. This failure to commit apparently derives from John’s dissatisfaction with a drone-like job endured while he attempts to establish a career as a writer/artist of graphic novels: a dream that just ... isn’t ... happening.

He’s summoned back home by the news that his mother, Sally (Martindale), has been hospitalized with a particularly nasty brain tumor. We get a sense that John, although inherently kind and sensitive, has semi-estranged himself from a tempestuous family environment; he returns to find that the flawed dynamic has blossomed into full-blown crisis and chaos.

His father, Don (Richard Jenkins), is inches away from losing the business he spent a lifetime building, his entire staff unwilling to continue until they’re paid several weeks’ back wages. Don also is hit the hardest by this medical crisis, literally crumbling before everybody’s eyes.

The Wind Rises: This film soars

The Wind Rises (2013) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rating: Rated PG-13, for dramatic content and disturbing images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.14.14

Animation fans who think of Hayao Miyazaki’s films solely in terms of fantasy realms and whimsical (sometimes dangerous) supernatural creatures — 2001’s Academy Award-winning Spirited Away having much to do with this genre affiliation — are in for a surprise.

To his amazement, young Jirô (running in foreground) seems to share his dreams with
the flamboyant Caproni, a famed Italian aeronautical engineer who designs planes for
the sheer joy of mechanical artistry. Can a bespectacled country boy hope to do the
same, when he achieves adulthood?

Quite a surprise.

Although The Wind Rises opens with a surreal quality that feels like vintage Miyazaki, focusing on a young country boy smitten by the rhapsodic magic of aircraft, this film is grounded in historical fact: much more biography than imaginative fancy. The year is 1918, the boy is Jirô Horikoshi, and he often finds himself in plane-laden dreams that seem to be shared by famed Italian aeronautical designer Giovanni Battista Caproni, whose bombers played a significant role in World War I ... but who also has far-reaching concepts for peacetime passenger aircraft.

This is mere prologue: the spark that ignites Jirô’s determination to become an aircraft engineer. A few years pass; having reached young adulthood (now voiced, in this dubbed American version, by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Jirô boards a train in order to attend college in Tokyo, little realizing that Miyazaki — employing the artistic license so beloved by writers who play with time and place — has orchestrated an appointment with fate.

What later came to be known as the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 strikes just as Jirô’s train reaches the city outskirts. He meets and rescues Nahoko Satomi (voiced by Emily Blunt), re-uniting her with family while firestorms sweep through the city and surrounding areas. Without much of a backward glance, Jirô then pushes on to his university, where he and new friend Honjô (John Krasinski) do their best to rescue books and other valuable property.

Time passes anew; Jirô and Honjô join the Mitsubishi engineering company in 1927, where they’re constantly browbeaten by their grumpy, imperious boss, Kurokawa (Martin Short). Even so, Jirô’s innovative concepts quickly catch the attention of senior designer Hattori (Mandy Patinkin).

These initial years at Mitsubishi unfold against Japan’s Great Depression, which forces the seriously understaffed and overworked Mitsubishi engineers to labor under significant handicaps. Jirô revels in the work for its own sake, having no outside life to distract him; Honjô supplies some outer-world context by lamenting that their primitive conditions are keeping them 10 years behind superior German designers.

By way of illustrating this disparity, Mitsubishi’s test aircraft must be hauled onto fields by oxen.

Promised Land: Rock-solid advocacy cinema

Promised Land (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.9.13


Matt Damon hasn’t written many scripts since 1997’s Good Will Hunting, his Academy Award-winning debut effort with Ben Affleck. His prudence is understandable; where does one go, from up?

Hoping to undo the doubts raised by a local farmer who warns that fracking is anything
but a safe means of obtaining "clean" natural gas, Steve Butler (Matt Damon) takes
the microphone during a McKinley town meeting. Unfortunately, his usual smooth
patter will fail him a bit here, leading to a divided community ... and displeasure on the
part of Steve's corporate bosses.

Good Will Hunting was directed by Gus Van Sant; no surprise, then, that they collaborated on Damon’s next script, 2002’s little-seen (with good cause) Gerry.

Perhaps chastened by that experience, Damon put his word processor in the closet for a decade, while crafting an impressive acting career as both action hero — the Bourne series — and overall international film star.

But writers never quit; telling stories is in their blood. No doubt Damon was waiting for just the right property, and he certainly got it with Promised Land. Once again under Van Sant’s capable guidance, this captivating drama gets its juice from well-crafted characters, tart dialogue, a solid ensemble cast and a hot-button scenario ripped from real-world headlines.

Damon shares scripting duties with John Krasinski, a rising film star making good on the promise he has shown for so many years, on television’s The Office. Krasinski isn’t known as a writer — unless once includes 2009’s best-forgotten Brief Interviews with Hideous Men — but he certainly rises to the occasion here. He and Damon have deftly adapted a story by Dave Eggers, who burst on the scene a few years ago, with scripts for Away We Go and Where the Wild Things Are.

Good screenplays get their power from many elements. It’s not enough to craft piquant one-liners; they must be true to a well constructed plot. (They also must be delivered well by actors who understand how to maximize the impact of crisply timed dialogue, and that’s where we credit Van Sant.) The characters themselves must be interesting, efficiently sketched and cleverly integrated with all the other players on stage. We must care about them, either as good guys or bad guys.

Most of all, they must change — mature, regress, whatever — as a result of what happens to them.

A tall order all around.

Factor in a desire to be relevant — to indict a topic of the day — and most writers fail to juggle all those fragile eggs.

Damon and Krasinski, in welcome contrast, never err. Even casual exchanges of dialogue have consequences; watch for the payoff on a passing reference to a little girl selling lemonade outside a high school gymnasium. Goodness, it could be argued that she carries the moral weight of the entire film. That is sharp scripting.

It's Complicated: Is it too complicated?

It's Complicated (2009) • View trailer for It's Complicated
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for drug content and frank sexual dialogue
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.09
Buy DVD: It's Complicated • Buy Blu-Ray: It's Complicated [Blu-ray]

Eyebrows are likely to lift, not far into It's Complicated, when Meryl Streep's Jane Adler speaks wistfully of a home remodel that finally will give her "the kitchen she's always dreamed of" ... a statement she makes while standing in a kitchen most of us would kill for, in a luxurious and rambling country home that resembles a presidential summer retreat.

Yes, writer/director Nancy Meyers' film is another one of those romantic comedies that we all can identify with so easily, since it involves only White People With More Money Than God. You'll not find a single African-American, Latino or Asian face in this entire picture, which makes it a rather curious throwback to the lavish Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers dance films of the 1930s.

Jake (Alec Baldwin, center right) and his much younger second wife, Agness
(Lake Bell, far right), are quite amused by the enthusiasm that Jane (Meryl
Streep) and Adam (Steve Martin) have brought to a party. But these giddy high
spirits aren't self-induced; Jane and Adam rather naughtily split a joint before
entering the room, in an effort to "take the edge off." They succeed...

Those pictures were intended to take audiences away, if only for a few hours, from the grim realities of the real-world Depression; to a degree, the ploy was successful. Funny thing, though; my reaction to It's Complicated and its financial largess involves far more irritation than capricious wish-fulfillment.

Jane apparently gets her bottomless bank account from her thriving bakery/restaurant, always packed to the gills even in these discouraging times. And while we can assume that ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin), a successful attorney, ponied up a substantial settlement during contentious divorce proceedings, many years ago, I'm still not sure this would justify such a house in tony Santa Barbara.

Such issues make Meyers' film feel oddly retro, as if it hopped a time machine from Hollywood's Golden Age. The core premise — divorcée embarks on a hot affair with her ex — has the potential for the sort of screwball comedy riffs delivered so well by the likes of Cary Grant and Irene Dunn, back in the day. (Appropriately enhanced by 21st century smutty dialogue, of course.)

But the "complicated" part of this film — the genuine pain and angst the affair brings both to its primary protagonists and a gaggle of secondary characters, notably Jane and Jake's three adult children — feels far more European. Indeed, at one point Jake even comments that he finds the situation "very French."

These two moods — American screwball comedy and sophisticated French sex farce — don't really mesh all that well. As a result, the film feels a bit "off" and unbalanced, although you may be at pains to identify the primary source of your dissatisfaction, upon exiting the theater.

On the other hand, Streep and Baldwin — ably supported by Steve Martin and John Krasinski — embrace this uneven material with the persuasive conviction we'd expect from top-flight stage actors in a production of King Lear. The cast is far superior to Meyers' screenplay, and this likely will make It's Complicated far more popular than it deserves to be.

Leatherheads: Football frolic

Leatherheads (2008) • View trailer for Leatherheads
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and much too harshly, for mild profanity and football action
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.4.08
Buy DVD: Leatherheads • Buy Blu-Ray: Leatherheads [Blu-ray]

Although ostensibly a period romp set in the rough 'n' tumble world of nascent professional football, Leatherheads also is a perceptive parable on the importance of heroes.

Duluth Bulldogs player Dodge Connolly (George Clooney, right) persuades
ruthless businessman CC Frazier (Jonathan Pryce, center) to move golden boy
Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford (John Krasinski) from his college ball
environment, thus giving the young man a chance to make money while
playing the game he loves. The deal is observed quietly by Chicago Tribune
reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger), who knows something the
others don't ... and wonders how best to use this information.

That's a pretty weighty topic for a film that has been marketed as a frivolous romantic comedy, which is all to the good. Credit first-time screenwriters and Sports Illustrated veterans Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, who've become minor legends for the perseverance they've displayed while pitching this project for two decades (!).

Credit director and star George Clooney, as well, for recognizing the script's potential.

At first blush, Leatherheads is a retro homage to classic screwball comedies of the late 1930s and early '40s, most notably director Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday, since this new film boasts a similar romantic triangle anchored by a tough-talking female reporter — that would be Renée Zellweger's Lexie Littleton — with strong echoes of Rosalind Russell's Hildy Johnson.

Clooney's rat-a-tat verbal exchanges with Zellweger are to die for, with both performers making the most of crackerjack dialogue, raised eyebrows, pursed lips and impeccably timed double (and even triple) takes.

The story, set in 1925, begins during an average day for the Duluth Bulldogs, a typical "professional" football team composed of rough, foul-mouthed and quick-tempered players who delight in their ability to win through guile, trickery or outright cheating. Actually, "cheating" rather overstates the case, since this fledgling sport exists in a realm without rules or codes of conduct, and often is played on weed-strewn fields not entirely bereft of livestock.

The Bulldogs are more or less led by Dodge Connolly (Clooney), smart enough to see the writing on the wall: Their free-for-all games attract no more than family members and a smattering of loud, drunk fans who'd never dream of spending more than a pittance to attend.

College football, on the other hand, is an entirely different critter: The games are better regulated and held in gorgeous stadiums, and they attract thousands of well-behaved fans. That's particularly true of games that feature rising star Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford (John Krasinski, of TV's The Office), a golden-boy WWI hero coasting on his larger-than-life feat of having forced an entire squadron of German soldiers to surrender. Single-handedly, no less.