Johnny English Strikes Again (2018)

I wonder who thought that now was a good time to bring back the character of Johnny English, a rather arrogant man who often has ideas he lacks the skill to turn into action, who views himself as superior to his global counterparts, despite consistently proving otherwise, and who seems stuck in a haze of past former glories that are formed from chance events, misconceptions, and moments of standing on the shoulders of others. On second thoughts, it makes perfect sense that this character came back now. But is this new movie any good?

Sort of.

The plot sees Johnny English (Atkinson reprising the role, of course) being the last resort, yet again, when a national emergency needs a hero to avert disaster. This time the disaster is caused by a cyber-criminal. English is reunited with Bough (Ben Miller), he has some classic gadgets to help him along, and also gets the chance to become smitten with a woman named Ophelia Bhuletova (Olga Kurylenko).

There are some good laughs to be had here, a couple of set-pieces made me chuckle throughout, but perhaps not enough to warrant an entire new adventure for the UK's most hapless spy (although, in fairness, this balances the character out between the useless man we first met and the more skilled agent of the second movie, albeit rusty after his years not being in active service). I will always laugh at a scene that has Rowan Atkinson dancing to an intense dance tune, but that can be done without a whole Johnny English movie framing it. Likewise, the sequence in which Atkinson dons a VR headset and causes havoc in London is a lot of fun, but also feels as if it could have been reworked within a better narrative.

Because for all it gets right, and director David Kerr (making his theatrical feature debut after a LOT of impressive TV work) certainly keeps everything moving along briskly enough, in line with the light and amusing script by William Davies (who also wrote the first film), there's an inescapable feeling that we've seen it all before, done better, or we're seeing something that could have been part of a much fresher experience. English is a character trotted out again when he should probably have been left in retirement, although that is a lot of what the film uses to get laughs.

As for the performances, everyone joins in with gusto. Atkinson and Miller make a good duo, once again, with the latter particularly entertaining during the many times he chooses not to comment after yet another disastrous episode or lapse in judgement. Kurylenko is the kind of glamorous and dangerous woman she can play in her sleep, Jake Lacy is a tech whizz who may just be the most obvious link to the cyber-terror, and Emma Thompson is a hoot as a Prime Minister who gets through each bad day with sheer force of will and canny decision-making. And alcohol.

Maybe slightly better than the first movie, especially during a wonderful opening sequence that shows English in his new role as a teacher, but not as good as the second, this is a third outing ultimately undone by how completely unnecessary it feels.

6/10

You can buy a boxset here.
Americans can buy the movie here.

Netflix And Chill: Johnny English Reborn (2011)

I have no idea what movie I saw, and so disliked, some years ago but it seems that it wasn't this one. Or, if it was, I was in some kind of terrible mood that completely clouded my judgement. Because Johnny English Reborn made me laugh a lot. It's silly, it's predictable (seriously, if you cannot spot the main villain as soon as they appear then I'll be amazed), and it's superior to the first outing in a few key ways.

Atkinson returns to play the main character, a man we last saw basking in the glow of success. That glow has long faded, after an incident in Mozambique that was so bad that he even had his knighthood removed, and he has spent a long time training with Tibetan monks. But an opportunity for redemption awaits when he is requested back by MI7. There's a plot brewing to kill the Chinese Premier and the main lead will only talk to English. Partnered up with a young man named Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya) and armed with the latest gadgets, English is determined to foil the plot. And he's a lot more skilled than he used to be.

There's a level of polish and ambition here that was missing from the first film, although I think it may have been possible here as a direct result of that film's success. And it also does a great job of delivering what audiences want more of while not simply rehashing all of the previous highlights.

Director Oliver Parker oversees everything with a sense of confidence and style, working with a great script from Hamish McCool that, sensibly, makes the main character a much better agent than he used to be, although he still lacks essential knowledge and social skills while remaining oblivious to his own failings. Rather than just derive laughs from the ineptitude and clumsiness of English, McCool gives the character a different flavour. He's an agent who now compensates for his failings with new techniques and tricks.

Atkinson has just as much fun in his role, perhaps even more so with the moments that allow him to look a lot cooler than he ever has before (a chase sequence in which he relentlessly, but sedately, strides along after a daredevil practitioner of parkour is a highlight in the first half that best rings the changes), and the supporting cast is even stronger than it was for his last spy adventure. Kaluuya is as likeable as ever in his role, Gillian Anderson is the weary boss, Dominic West is the standard British agent in the mould that we're all more familiar with, and Rosamund Pike is a behavioural psychologist who obviously finds herself fascinated by English, and you also get small roles for Stephen Campbell Moore, Richard Schiff, Tim McInnerny, and Pik Sen Lim (as a deadly assassin).

If you enjoyed the first film then you're likely to enjoy this. There's even a chance that, like me, you enjoy this one even more. And I'm looking forward to checking out the next instalment.

7/10

Here's a triple-pack for you.
Americans can buy the same set here.

Netflix And Chill: Johnny English (2003)

Movies come from many places. Original ideas (don't laugh, this does still happen occasionally, it's just not the source for 95% of the big names you'll see advertised at your local multiplex), TV spin-offs, tales springboarding from real events, and reworked board games. But very few other movies, if any, have been developed after a successful series of adverts. Beginning his life in a series of Barclaycard adverts, Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) was a comedic riff on the James Bond character. Never that savvy, pretty hopeless with the gadgets, and yet still trying to give off that image of unflappable cool, he was the kind of character that it would make sense to create a movie around.

The plot sees every other MI7 agent in the land killed during the funeral of one top agent (who died because of misinformation given to him by English). With nobody else available, English is tasked with keeping an event secure that will focus on a display of the Crown Jewels in the Tower Of London. Those jewels are stolen, which takes English on a journey that will lead him and his partner (Angus Bough, played by Ben Miller) on a collision course with Pascal Edward Sauvage (John Malkovich), a Frenchman who has been celebrated for a series of "superprisons".

Since making his feature debut with Sliding Doors, director Peter Howitt was, for the first few movies that had him in the big chair, a fairly safe pair of hands. None of his films were particularly memorable, but most of them did exactly what they were supposed to do. Johnny English sits perfectly among those titles.

What you have is a script by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and William Davies that feels incredibly light, focusing on a number of plot points while leaving a few spaces here and there in which Atkinson can do the kind of physical comedy that he does so well. It hits all of the required Bond-isms, not surprising as Purvis and Wade have been working on that franchise for the past twenty years, but doesn't do quite enough to make the comedic set-pieces as funny as they could be.

That's all pretty much left to Atkinson, who is good, but never great. Constrained by the suit he has to wear, Atkinson is left to bumble around like an inferior Inspector Clouseau, with too many of the jokes either obvious or just falling flat. There are minor chuckles throughout most scenes, but very few big belly laughs. Miller is excellent in the role of suffering assistant, however, and Malkovich clearly has a lot of fun with his role. You also get Natalie Imbruglia doing a decent job as the beautiful woman mixed up in everything somehow.

There's something to be said, of course, for entertainment of this nature. Genuinely fun for all, fairly inoffensive, and paced and timed almost to perfection. In that way, and with the 007-like music cues running through it, this works well. It just didn't make me laugh as much as expected, considering how much I often enjoy Atkinson's style of comedy.

6/10

Here's a triple-pack for you.
Americans can buy the same set here.

Red Sparrow (2018)

Although I didn't really dislike Red Sparrow while it was on, it's not a film I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, mainly because of the way it constantly wavers between being too slick and neat and being bloody and faux-gritty.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika, a Russian ballerina who ends up struggling after an injury cuts her promising career short. She is then approached by her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts) with a job offer - seduce a local gangster. That job ends in death, and Dominika is then given the option of either training to become an intelligence agent or being killed, to ensure there are no witnesses left. It's not much of a choice, and Dominika also has an ill mother (Joely Richardson) to consider. She starts her training, which soon puts her at odds with those around her, due to her strong will and determination, and then ends up heading to Budapest, where she meets an American agent (Nate, played by Joel Edgerton) who may end up being able to help her with her predicament. Or maybe she will just do her job, leaving a number of corpses in her week.

Directed by Francis Lawrence, Red Sparrow is certainly an ambitious film, considering the attempt to make an old-fashioned spy movie that will appeal to a wider age range than most. Lawrence did a decent job of mixing pure entertainment with interesting psychological moments in his three movies that made up three of the four The Hunger Games series so it's a shame that he can't do just as well here. Perhaps some of the fault lies with the script, by Justin Haythe, or perhaps the source material, written by Jason Matthews, was just never suited to what feels like a more sanitised telling of the story (despite a few strong moments).

Lawrence does a good job in the lead role, and her accent remains consistently impressive throughout. She's given good support by other fine Russians, such as Richardson, Charlotte Rampling,  Ciaran Hinds, and Jeremy Irons (obviously all picked for their talent and name recognition, as opposed to their actual . . . Russian-ness). Schoenaerts feels more obviously authentic, despite being Belgian, and he does a lot with a role that could have easily been either a pantomime villain or just a forgettable plot device.

Red Sparrow gets a few things right. The performances, the generally clean shot compositions and style (this is not a film for anyone looking out for the next Bourne), a lot of the plotting. But it doesn't ever do anything to make it stand out, cinematically, and the 140-minute runtime feels overlong by a good 20-30 minutes. But it's that inconsistent approach to the material that probably harms it the most. There are scenes that Lawrence knows can't be shown to be cool or sexy, he'd be in big trouble if he tried, but then he tries to keep everything moving along in between those scenes by utilising the star power of his leading lady, who inevitably comes across at times as, well, cool and sexy. It stops the film from having one true identity throughout.

Worth a watch, I'm just not sure of anyone who will love it, and I can't see it being one that anyone will choose to revisit more than once or twice.

6/10

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Spies Like Us (1985)

When Spies Like Us first came out I remember that I rented it numerous times, running home with that chunky VHS box in my pre-teen hands and looking forward each time to the antics of Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase sparking off each other onscreen. And then I was always disappointed by the slow build-up and the flat patches in between the decent moments of comedy, even at that early age.

So it's no surprise to learn that the film turns out to be just the same nowadays as it seemed way back then. The story is a simple one. Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd are two government employees who think that they're being given a chance to be spies when, in actual fact, they're nothing more than decoys while the valued spies get on with their duties. This leads to numerous situations in which our inept leads find themselves way out of their depth and with their lives on the line.

Based on a screenplay by Dan Aykroyd, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, Spies Like Us is clearly inspired by the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "Road" movies and works well as a tribute. Chevy Chase is the fast-talking, bumbling half of the duo while Aykroyd is actually pretty smart and simply unequipped for a mission which the two men have not been expected to complete in any event.

Director John Landis paces things almost exactly as he paced Trading Places, except this time around there are less big laughs in the comedic moments and so the movie feels slower and "flabbier" despite a runtime of just over 100 minutes. Highlights include a selection of scenes showing our duo going through intense training, a sequence in which the two try to pass themselves off as doctors and a finale that features the funktastic sound of "Soul Finger".

Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd play to their strengths, you'll know already if you love or hate them, and the rest of the cast includes such luminaries as Steve Forrest, Donna Dixon, Bruce Davison, Bernie Casey, Frank Oz and, as this is a Landis movie, a number of cameos from the likes of Terry Gilliam, Ray Harryhausen, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi and many others.

Oh, and to end on a little bit of trivia, the "see you next Wednesday" that was a Landis trademark in many of his movies is seen on an army-related poster in the office of Colonel Rhumbus (played by Casey). 

6/10.

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