A 'nerdy' spy goes rogue

 

  Watching Rami Malek play Charlie Heller, a grieving CIA intelligence expert in The Amateur, it's easy to forget that the actor won an Oscar for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody (2019). 

   Malek sometimes seems to be a different movie than the rest of the cast. That could have been a calculated choice because Heller's CIA colleagues consistently underestimate his abilities. We're repeatedly told that Heller, who everyone refers to with the diminutive 'Charlie,' lacks a killer instinct. 

   Maybe Malek's performance seldom clicked for me, but that's not the only problem with director James Hawes's revenge saga. The Amateur strings a series of improbable events together as it hopscotches the world in search of excitement.

     The event that triggers all the commotion occurs when terrorists murder Charlie's wife (Rachel Brosnahan) while she's attending a work-related conference in London. Guilty about having declined an invitation to accompany his wife abroad, Charlie expects a full-throttle reaction from his CIA employer. 

  When his boss (Holt McCallany) dithers about why such a response won't be forthcoming, nerdy Charlie shocks his superiors by asking if he can be the one to kill his wife's murderers. He requests some hardcore training so he can hunt the antagonists responsible for his wife's death.

  The CIA grudgingly agrees, hoping Charlie's inadequacies will help quench his thirst for revenge. Enter Laurence Fishburne as the officer assigned to train Charlie in the agency's darker arts.

  As expected, Charlie proves ill-suited for a killer's role, but that doesn’t stop him from going rogue and taking off on his own. No longer willing to humor Charlie, the CIA sets out to stop him.

  A low-credibility affair, The Amateur might have saved itself had it been able to wink at its intermittent preposterousness while jumping to London, Paris, Marseilles, Istanbul, and Russia. 

  In adapting a 1981 novel by Robert Littell, the screenplay takes too little time establishing Charlie's technical brilliance, giving him too few opportunities to win the audience over. And for a movie that feels longer than its two-hour and three-minute run time, the story often feels more sketched than developed.

  Though undernourished, some of the supporting performances provide colorful touches. Jon Bernthal has a nice turn as a scruffy CIA agent who knows the ropes; Caitriona Balfe portrays the widow of a Russian KGB agent who helps Charlie; Julianne Nicholson signs on as head of the CIA, and Michael Stuhlbarg gives the finale some life as Charlie's chief adversary.

     And, yes, some of the action clicks, notably Charlie's confrontation with one of his targets in a glass-bottomed hotel swimming pool constructed between two skyscrapers.

   Overall, though, The Amateur unfolds like a potentially intriguing conversation to which you listen but don't fully connect. I half wondered whether the movie was leaping from one location to another in hopes of finding a much-needed spark.

Daniel Craig's admirable departure from Bond

   Remember when we didn't take Bond movies seriously? Time was all we wanted from a Bond movie was nifty gadgets, charm, beautiful women, one-liners, and an out-sized villain, preferably working with Spectre.

  That's why the series could survive the switch from Sean Connery (still the best Bond) to Roger Moore to Pierce Brosnan to Timothy Dalton — and that's not even a complete list. The point: Fulfill the formula, add a few new wrinkles, and we were happy.

  Daniel Craig, the latest Bond, is about to pass the torch to another Bond, which greatly raises anticipation for No Time to Die, Craig's last swing at 007. We already know that Craig’s Bond has the power of a clenched fist. His is not a winking Bond, happy to let us in on the joke. 

   Craig has given us a Bond for our distraught, deracinated time, a bond minus joviality and bonhomie — but now with the capability of loving, and, thus, being hurt.

   Some of No Time To Die qualifies as old-style fun. Moreover, the movie's prologue and early scenes totally satisfy our craving for more Bond; i.e., they're full scenic glamor and incredible action.

    A quick summary of the set-up: An assassin's attempts to kill the wife and daughter of a man who slaughtered his family. The movie then leaps ahead to find Bond in love and vacationing in a rocky Italian village. His companion: the daughter (Lea Seydoux) who was spared by the killer in the movie's opening.

    The movie eventually begins unfolding a complicated plot involving a deadly biological weapon that can be tailored to target specific individuals -- or to wreak mass havoc.

   I don't mean to suggest that I didn't enjoy the rest of this overly long Bond, which clocks in at two hours and 43 minutes and ends with a sense of resignation that fits our moment of national and international fatigue.

   Director Cary Joji Fukunaga guides Craig's final bond to a noble end and provides enough of everything else that we want from a Bond movie to make the journey worth taking.

    No Bond movie is complete without seeing Bond in formal wear. He turns up in a tuxedo in Jamaica where he encounters a glamorous spy played by Ana de Armas. 

    Critics once argued that every Bond movie rises and falls with its villain. A good villain meant a good Bond -- no matter who donned  the 007 mantle.

   This time, Rami Malek upholds the banner of evil, opting to make Lyutsifer Safin a soft-spoken man with a bad complexion and an unquenchable taste for vengeance. Lyutsifer’s ambitions are big, but his personality seems small.

   Muscular and sometimes brutal, Craig receives able support from a large cast. Christoph Waltz makes a brief appearance as Blofeld. Jeffrey Wright portrays Felix Leiter,  CIA man, and friend of Bond.

    Ralph Fiennes continues to bring weight and gravity to the role of M. Naomi Harris again turns up as the ever-loyal Moneypenny, and Ben Whishaw returns as Q, the inventor of the gadgetry that gives Bond his advantage and a tech whiz who monitors Bond's moves.

   The movie even adds another 007. Because Bond has retired, MI6 has awarded his 007 designation to Nomi (Lashana Lynch), a newcomer who may gain a foothold for future Bond movies.

   The movie ultimately heads toward a remote island (where else?) from which Lyutsifer plans to launch a world-threatening attack.

    With improvements in budget and special effects, the Bond movies have been able to increase their scale with each new addition, and let's face it, scale has much to do with why we keep going to Bond movies. 

   Fukunaga doesn't shortchange us on locations -- even if we feel that Craig's last turn as Bond has more to do with what the movie is about than any threat Lyutsifer poses.

   For the record, Billie Eilish sings No Time To Die, the song that plays over the opening credits.

  No Time to Die tends to lag a bit around the three-quarter mark and it sometimes feels driven by fumes of determination, but when it's done, No Time to Die has brought Craig's tenure to a strong and worthy conclusion.

B-movie maneuvers with an A-list cast

    A thriller that evokes memories of other movies about cops and serial killers, The Little Things traffics in downbeat atmospherics with a thriller set in 1990s. 

   Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto star in a story that has been vamped on and recycled so many times, it's difficult to see the movie as more than another genre exercise.

    Looking paunchy, exhausted and gray, Denzel Washington plays Joe "Deke" Deacon, a Northern California deputy sent to LA to retrieve a piece of evidence.  As it turns out, Joe once worked in LA, a city he couldn't escape without tarnishing his reputation.

    Once in LA, Joe teams with Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek), an LA detective with a starched personality and a talent for getting himself on the news. Jimmy asks Joe to join him in trying to solve a string of murders, prostitutes who have been mutilated.

   Enter Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), an LA refrigerator repairman who lives on the margins, walks with a waddle and has enough smarts to make for a tough interview when the cops haul him in for questioning. 

     With long hair that looks as if it hasn't been washed for weeks and a taste for strip clubs, Albert has prime suspect written all over him.

     Washington has an uncanny ability to make us believe that any character he plays knows more than anyone else. He and Malek make a decent enough team, mismatched at first but increasingly on the same page.

     The screenplay creates a predictable thematic link between Joe and Jimmy, building a connection around each's capacity for moral compromise. Joe was suspended from the LA force because he became obsessed with a case that shattered his marriage and put him in the hospital for triple bypass surgery.

     Director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) turns out a police procedural that peeks into the darkest corners of cop and criminal behavior -- not so much because it's curious but because the atmospherics demand it. 

     Even worse, the story falls short during the final act which finds Jimmy behaving  in ways that defy credibility. 

     The Little Things fulfills many of the requirements of a gritty genre piece, moving its characters through a world from which no one escapes uncorrupted, sort of a B-movie with an A-list cast and noir shading.

       But with three Oscar winners in the principal roles, it's not unfair to have expected something more.

      

A second helping of 'Papillon'

Gritty detail and grim realism may not be enough to justify another version of a familiar story.

The unavoidable question that haunts any viewing of the new movie Papillon falls squarely on the shoulders of the 1973 movie of the same name. That movie that told the gripping story of one man's attempts to escape the torment and terror of a penal colony located in French Guiana. Could anyone pull off a second helping?

The 1973 movie starred Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in what then seemed like odd-couple casting.

McQueen was a movie star with a well-defined big-screen persona; Hoffman was an actor with a capital “A.” We went to McQueen's movies to watch a cool, emotionally contained hero dominate the screen; we watched Hoffman's work to see an avid actor dig his way into the characters he played.

Written by Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr. and directed by Franklin Schaffner, the 1973 movie created a commercial splash.

The 2018 version of Papillon doesn’t generate the same kind of excitement and probably couldn’t. When the first movie arrived, the wave of new technologies — from VCRs to streaming — was still waiting in the wings. Movies seemed bigger, less disposable.

So why, in a time of movie abundance (at least in terms of numbers of releases), remake a movie that already did the job of introducing American audiences to Henri Charriere; a.k.a., Papillon, and Louis Dega, two French criminals who served time in a sweltering prison hell in South America?

Danish director Michael Noer answers the question by amping up the movie's grit and cruelty, probably to heighten its raw authenticity. His movie sweats and brutalizes.

Charriere, the McQueen character now played by Charlie Hunnam, gives the movie its sinew and drive. Wrongly convicted of murder in 1931, Charriere receives a life sentence. En route to the prison, he meets Dega, the Hoffman role now played by Rami Malek. A forger by trade, Dega has enough money to ease some of Guiana's pain. Prisoners could buy their way onto better work details, for example.

Understanding this, Charriere, bereft of financial resources, offers to protect the weaker Dega from the prison’s many predators. The two develop an uneasy relationship.

The authenticity of Charriere’s account has been questioned, but his story stands as a tribute to the unbreakable will of a man who refuses to be crushed. Charriere, who wrote a best-selling book about his experiences, never relinquishes his hope for escape, to free himself from the choking burdens of stupid authority.

Hunnam, last seen in James Gray’s The Lost City of Z, and Malek, of TV’s Mr. Robot, may not generate the box-office heat once sparked by McQueen and Hoffman, but both are good. They fully embrace the movie's challenges: weight loss, punishing fights and sustained reaction to a fear-drenched climate.

The movie devotes much its time to depicting the sadism that prevailed in French Guiana, delivered at the hands of both prisoners and guards. Escapes were greeted with years in solitary. Those deemed murderers were executed by guillotine while the assembled prisoners were forced to watch.

Though more harrowingly detailed than the first installment, this new Papillon still tells the same basic story as the 1973 movie and, as a result, can’t help but surrender some of its power. Put another way: An inescapable aroma of redundancy limits this credible but exhausting edition.