Central Intelligence

For F*** Magazine

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

Director : Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast : Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Amy Ryan, Aaron Paul, Danielle Nicolet, Thomas Kretschmann
Genre : Action/Comedy
Run Time : 1 hr 54 mins
Opens : 16 June 2016
Rating : PG13 (Some Sexual References and Coarse Language)

Over the past few years, Kevin Hart has become the universal adapter plug of the buddy comedy subgenre, having been paired with the likes of Will Ferrell, Josh Gad and Ice Cube amongst others. This time, Hart is teamed with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But is just their disparity in physical stature enough to elicit the laughs?

Hart plays Calvin “Golden Jet” Joyner, who in high school, was a popular and highly successful student. Robbie Weirdicht (Johnson) was an overweight social outcast who was relentlessly bullied, and Calvin was the only one who would show him any kindness. 20 years later, Robbie has undergone a complete physical transformation and reinvented himself as “Bob Stone”. Calvin is married to his high school sweetheart Maggie (Nicolet), but is unfulfilled in his accounting career. Robbie and Calvin reunite, but Calvin is informed by CIA agent Pamela Harris (Ryan) that Robbie is in fact a dangerous rogue agency operative wanted for the murder of his former partner. Robbie tries to convince Calvin of his innocence as the two go on the run, trying to stop classified intel from falling into the hands of a mysterious underworld player known as “the Black Badger”.

The thinking behind Central Intelligence seems to have been “just let the two leads loose, that should be plenty to carry a movie.” Much of the would-be comedy is painfully unfunny, and the action is generic and unimpressive. This is far from the first comedy in which a regular Joe is flung into the mix of high-stakes international intrigue, and the plot is painfully perfunctory and the final reveal is a predictable one. There’s an anti-bullying message here, that if you’re picked on by the jocks in high school, all you need to do is transform yourself into Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to get back at them. That should be pretty easy for anyone to do. The prologue features Johnson’s face digitally pasted onto a different actor who portrays the young Robbie; this effect is nestled deep in the uncanny valley and is terrifying rather than funny.

To the movie’s credit, it doesn’t go down the “one’s silly and the other’s stoic” route typical of buddy cop flicks. While Hart does eventually go into shrill, flailing mode, the character is likeable because of the kindness he shows towards the underdog. Johnson does have fun with the Robbie character, who may be all 6’ 5” of hulking muscle, but is the same awkward, socially mal-adjusted kid deep down. The thing is, Johnson is too slick and polished to come across as convincingly dorky. Nicolet’s Maggie is just “the wife” – the plot seems to hint at how marrying one’s high school sweetheart may not be all it’s cracked up to be, but doesn’t really go anywhere. Ryan is certainly far above the material, and phones it in as the comically serious dogged agent hunting down the suspect. Bateman is pretty much wasted as a stock slimy, snivelling banker type, and Paul’s appearance amounts to little more than an extended cameo. Look out for a prominent comedienne in the film's climax.

Central Intelligence has the same problem that most Kevin Hart vehicles have: the producers bank too much on the comedian’s appeal to audiences and everything around him seems to be on autopilot. It’s a wasted opportunity, especially since Hart is paired with a bona fide action hero like Johnson. Instead of a production line comedy with bits of action sprinkled about half-heartedly, it would have been fun to see the duo tear into the conventions of buddy cop and spy movies in a full-tilt action extravaganza fuelled by belly laughs. The film trucks out the hoary dictum of “being yourself” – we’ll bet it’s easy to “be yourself” when you’re Dwayne Johnson. The scenes in which Robbie is wracked with anxiety brought about by the trauma he endured in school did resonate a little with this reviewer, but it never seems sincere enough to be a truly effective message. Sure, it’s sporadically amusing just by dint of putting Hart and Johnson together, but it’s clear that Central Intelligence isn’t aiming for any particular heights and is merely coasting along.

Summary: Sure, the leading men have chemistry, but unremarkable action sequences and jokes that are more cringe-inducing than genuinely funny ensure this won’t be front and centre in most moviegoers’ memories after they leave the theatre.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Hitman: Agent 47

For F*** Magazine

HITMAN: AGENT 47

Director : Aleksander Bach

Cast : Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto, Ciaràn Hinds, Thomas Kretschmann, Emilio Rivera, Dan Bakkedahl, Angelababy

Genre : Action/Thriller

Run Time : 97 mins

Opens : 20 August 2015

Rating : NC-16 (Violence And Brief Nudity)

Agent 47, the perfect assassin, failed to make a killing at the box office with his 2007 cinematic outing and is back for a second go-round in this reboot. Agent 47 (Friend) is the result of a top-secret genetic engineering program spearheaded by Dr. Litvenko (Hinds). Horrified at what he had created, Dr. Litvenko vanished and went into hiding, deserting his daughter Katia (Ware), who has spent the better part of her life searching for her father. In Berlin, it appears that Agent 47 is out to kill Katia, and a mysterious man known as “John Smith” (Quinto) arrives to protect her. However, all is not as it seems, and everything converges in Singapore, where the sinister corporation Syndicate International has its headquarters. Syndicate’s chairman Le Clerq (Kretschmann) is determined to restart the Agent program and create more killing machines for his own nefarious ends, and it is up to 47 and Katia to stop him from doing so. 

Fans of I/O Interactive’s Hitman video game franchise were understandably wary when it was announced that there would be a film reboot. The 2007 movie starring Timothy Olyphant was cheap, dull, incoherent and lacking in thrills, but Olyphant was convincingly tough and looked the part. Paul Walker was initially cast as 47 and was replaced by Rupert Friend after Walker’s untimely death. All the warning signs were there: first-time feature director Aleksander Bach, who has worked mainly in music videos, is at the helm and Skip Woods, who wrote the first film in addition to X-Men Origins: Wolverine and A Good Day to Die Hard, has a screenwriting credit. While the video game series is very much stealth-based, there is precious little sneaking around and a lot of shootouts in public places in this film. 

The movie is primarily set in two locales, Berlin and Singapore. This is the first major Hollywood production to shoot in the Southeast Asian nation and as is expected, it looks like a tourism commercial, with plenty of sweeping establishing shots of the city’s skyline, with the CGI Syndicate International building plonked into it. There is a novelty factor to seeing Singapore featured so prominently and hopefully this paves the way for more Hollywood films to shoot here, but it’s amply clear that an exotic location does little good if there isn’t a substantial story to back it up. Singapore is widely regarded as a pretty safe place to live and has one of the toughest gun control laws in the world. There are guns all over the place in Hitman: Agent 47’s version of Singapore, with 47 himself getting his arsenal into the country without a hitch. The filmmakers hope that audiences will suspend their disbelief instead of laughing at how ridiculous these scenarios are. Also, one of 47’s enhancements is apparently tolerance to warm weather, since he barely breaks a sweat while clad in those suits in the middle of the equatorial heat. 

Rupert Friend has endeared himself to many viewers as Peter Quinn, the special operative with a heart of gold, on TV’s Homeland. He is a good actor, but it is extremely difficult to buy him as an emotionless, stoic, single-minded assassin. In an effort to sound tough, he sometimes speaks in a silly hoarse whisper-mumble and struggles at coming across as intimidating or imposing. He isn’t phoning it in and he is competent at performing the fight choreography, but with a character whose appearance is as iconic and as striking as Agent 47’s, looks matter more than with other adaptations. Zachary Quinto knows he’s in a silly action movie and hams it up as the snarling villain – it’s intended to be ambiguous as to whose side he’s on, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s the bad guy, the moral landscape of this film nowhere near as grey as the producers imagine it to be. 

Hannah Ware’s Katia isn’t a particularly interesting character and Ware isn’t a particularly interesting actress, coming across as a generic English brunette. The character begins as somewhat of a damsel in distress but gets to do her share of ass-kicking later on in the film. Ware is never believable for a second in these scenes – far be it from us to criticise an actor’s physique, but she often looks like she’s in danger of snapping clean in half. Ciarán Hinds is probably happy to cash his paycheque and Thomas Kretschmann, no stranger to playing villains, does very little besides sitting behind a desk in a shiny high-rise office and barking orders to his minions. Hong Kong singer/actress Angela Yeung, better known as “Angelababy”, has what amounts to a cameo as 47’s boss Diana.  

The action sequences can be fun, if one overlooks the overuse of shaky-cam. It’s a shame that the camera never stays on the fights, because the action choreography is handled by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, directors of last year’s John Wick. It makes one wonder how much better this would have turned out under their control, even with the same sub-par script. The movie isn’t boring, moving along at a decent clip with an adequate collection of fisticuffs, shootouts and chases. Hitman: Agent 47 also benefits from its NC-16 (R in the U.S.) rating, meaning that it doesn’t have to pull its punches and can showcase a number of appropriately brutal kills. This is a movie about a hitman, after all. It’s too bad that a lot of the computer-generated imagery is unintentionally hilarious – any time a CGI stuntman went flying through the air, it took this reviewer out of the movie completely. 

If you’re a particularly undemanding action movie fan, Hitman: Agent 47 is certainly not the worst way to kill 108 minutes ever. It might be possible to overlook the thoroughly generic plot and enjoy the action and the locales, but this possesses a higher “leave your brain at the door” quotient than most “leave your brain at your door” movies. What is most entertaining is the thought that some Singaporean government official will have to pretend this is a good movie to justify its use of the country as a filming location. 

Summary: Cheesy and generic but bloody and fast-paced, Hitman: Agent 47 is reasonably fun to laugh at and is somewhat entertaining if one can embrace the dumbness wholeheartedly. 

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars 

Jedd Jong