A Most Wanted Man (2014)

One cannot watch Anton Corbijn’s ultra-tense “A Most Wanted Man” without mourning Philip Seymour Hoffman’s shocking death. “Most” is Hoffman’s final lead role, a notion that undeniably hovers over every dark frame. This story is rooted in futility and a man facing certain doom, likely eternal loneliness. Hoffman is chain-smoker German spy chief Gunther Bachmann, suffocating under the pressure of his job: Tracking suspected Middle Eastern terrorists in Germany post-9/11. The trick: Bachmann wants his suspects walking free to lead him to larger, more dangerous targets. His latest mark is a maybe innocent son (Grigoriy Dobrygin) of a war criminal who may want to truly dissolve his father’s ill-gotten future. The man brings into his circle a banker (Willem Dafoe) and a lawyer (Rachel McAdams) who quickly realize there are no bystanders in terrorism. More so, Bachmann is being hounded by bureaucrats to make arrests now, forget logistics. Who’s right? Who’s innocent? Nothing matters, and from the John Le Carre book from which this comes, that mindset can only lead to another dark day. The finale is a pulverizing gut punch. Hoffman truly marvels as a tired man crumbling before us. See it nonetheless. A

Three Days to Kill (2014)

Kevin Costner goes a long way in selling “Three Days to Kill,” a Luc Besson-produced action/“comedy” about a dying CIA assassin named Ethan who goes home to Paris to see his estranged family – Connie Nielsen as wife, and Hailee Steinfeld as teen daughter – before he kicks. As it happens, the CIA has one last job for Ethan: Kill two bad guys known as The Albino and The Wolf, who are neither an albino nor a wolf. Golden carrot: Way-too young CIA handler Vivi (Amber Heard) has a magic cure that can keep our man alive. Costner acts aces, truly. But “Kill” made my skin crawl. I’ll say it: Besson shines a creep perv voyeur for teen girls here and with “Taken” and his so-long-ago “Leon.” He fixates on girls who cannot walk outside without falling victim to rape, not without “daddy” to save them. Steinfeld’s teen gets the treatment here. Besson’s fantasy? The take on grad-school-age Vivi as some 1980s Euro-fantasy dominatrix smells of a gross dream of middle-aged men with script approval. Nielsen’s wife has nothing to do but forgive her man, repeatedly. Blame director McG? No. This hangs on Besson. Dickless. D+

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

I loved Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan book series before I drifted left and he disappeared into techno-war-porn liberal hate. Ryan was a great read: Injured marine turned CIA desk geek with deadly smarts. Blow shit up? Tougher guys did that. Clancy’s writing electrified: He foresaw 9/11 in 1994. Now comes “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” a reboot with Chris Pine as Ryan. It fizzles. It chases 9/11. It casts Russians as villains in a move politely called nostalgic. It starts strong: Young Ryan is wounded in Afghanistan, but his rehab spirit captures him a gal (Keira Knightly) and a secret boss (Kevin Costner) who hires Ryan for his vibe on tracking bad money. But fizzles. I’ll skip plot, because when the climax hits, Ryan –- injured 10 years on  -– is popping motorcycles like Knievel and punches like Bourne. Baffling. Did a reel get lost? Kenneth Branagh is director and bad guy, going full Hollywood. A missed idea screams loud: Why not recast Ryan with Knightly -- oddly cast as distressed damsel -- as female Ryan? Clancy might have been a right-wing blowhard, but he knew cool women. Disappointing. (But better than that Affleck crap.) C+

Escape Plan (2013)

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger headline “Escape Plan,” a prison thriller with the 1980s action stars stuck behind bars and wanting out, but I don’t mean that kind of “out,” I mean escape. See, there’s half the potential nasty fun gone. That would take guts. No sex here. This is bargain bin DVD fare with laughs galore for all the wrong reasons. Stallone is Ray Breslin, a guy who spends his career inside prisons, breaking out to teach wardens of their faults. So when the CIA tasks Ray with testing a black-ops prison for terrorists, he jumps at the chance. Sucker. The prison is run by Jesus –- Jim Caviezel -– and has the Terminator himself as an inmate eyeing freedom. Machine guns blast, explosions boom, threats made, and helicopters go low, but nothing can save the story’s eye-roll fake-outs from ridicule. Rocky and Terminator try, but no dice. The cliché where the nonwhite guy gladly sacrifices himself so our Euro-heroes can live … I wish it would just die. Just. Fuckin’. Die. And the guy is Muslim? Ouch. Long before credits rolled, I wanted escape. Dumb. C

Notorious (1946)

His dames typically died harsh, and he had crazy Mommy Issues. But Alfred Hitchcock’s run of films is unchallenged. Dig “Notorious.” Made just after WWII and before the arrival of Better Dead Than Red! American patriotism crushed free thought, this plays damn smart if you look between the Hayes’ Code lines. Here, a CIA agent (Cary Grant) forces the American daughter (Ingrid Bergman) of a Nazi spy to romance another SS Bootlicker (Claude Rains) to get any secrets he has cooking. And that he does: Atomic bomb deeds. Straight plot. Melodrama. Suspense. The title is a twisted joke: Grant’s bosses sit and damn Bergman as unwomanly and quite expendable whether she gets the goods or not, for she likes sex and liquor, her notoriety. Never mind these men, Grant included, enjoy skirts and booze. (Look for the lady at the party who knows Grant.) Hitchcock lays American hypocrisy flat with a stealth punch. How can we look these men in the eye? On Grant, we cannot. He is consistently shown from behind, his face a mystery for long stretches until he finally sees the damage his spy gaming has wrought. The final scene is ambiguous and pure Hitchcock genius. A

North by Northwest (1959)

I forgot just how funny Alfred Hitchcock’s early, genius spy-flick thriller “North by Northwest” is, until a recent watch on cable. Coolest Man Ever Cary Grant plays NYC ad guy Roger Thornhill, who gets stuck in a giddily preposterous mistaken identity chase across the U.S. of A with silent killers, the CIA, a dame, and Mount Rushmore all to follow. Early in, Grant as Thornhill is seized by two goons who try to kill him via a bottle of bourbon and a fake DUI car crash. Comedy gold hits: Smashed-ass Grant drives his way to jail, where his first and only call is to his mother. Literally, his mommy. Roger’s indignant. The cop near busts a tooth smirking. Hitchcock and writer Ernest Lehman (“Sweet Smell of Success”) turn 500 screws, add in murder, a mystery woman (Eva Marie Saint) with stranger/train sex on her inscrutable mind, and James Mason as a smooth villain with his own slippery identity. Oh, and that crop duster. So cool, Bond soon ripped it off. Hitchcock is having a cackling ball, yanking his camera to dizzy high spots, and letting Mason “punch” the screen. Knock out. Hitchcock kills it. A+

The Numbers Station (2013)

What happened to John Cusack? This is a guy who I have long admired, from “Say Anything,” with the boom box serenade, to “Grosse Point Blank,” a CIA assassin satire. But with “The Numbers Station,” on the heels of the regrettable “The Raven,” it seems Cusack has hit a deep, unfortunate slump. This has Cusack as one of the most tired of clichés, the deadly CIA killer (see, again) with a crisis of conscious after a job goes south and an innocent is killed. So his sad sack agent is sent to timeout, or more precisely, a remote U.S. Army outpost in England to babysit a code sender (Malin Akerman, because no government worker forced to live in isolation for two years at a time would look like Ma Barker) with orders to pop her if the station is ever compromised. Low and behold, the station falls under attack, and Kent must fight the good fight and talk about his wounded psyche with Ackerman’s coder, as people tend to do while being shot at. Will Cusack’s agent kill the lady? Right, the moment after Lloyd Dobler buys an iPad with ear buds. D+

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal scored Oscars but little box office traction with 2009’s Iraq-set “Hurt Locker.” In “Zero Dark Thirty,” they go bigger and bolder by following the CIA and then SEAL Team Six as they hunt and eventually kill Osama bin Laden. 

This is an openly controversial film. It invites scorn and bravado, as does any good piece of journalism. And this is a hard-hitting news piece a la spy/war film. A fantastic, bewildering, white-knuckle thriller, hard to easily grasp on a first viewing, but mesmerizing. In short, one of the year's best, most complex films. A must see.

After we hear 911 calls from that terrible Tuesday over a black screen, we delve for 40-some minutes into the capture and torture or an apparent terrorist at the hands of CIA operatives, as well as the back office paperwork and myriad details of the largest manhunt in U.S. history. The torture scenes hit hard. Our government denies torture ever took place. Nothing happened. I tend to trust the film. Torture happened. The detainee -- one of scores of captured men seen put through various acts of distress -- cracks a peep about a courier for bin Laden. From there a tiny, illusive thread is tracked for a decade by Mia (Jessica Chastain), a CIA field agent who has no other mission in life but to find the Al Qaeda leader. 

Leads dead-end, attacks rock London and elsewhere, colleagues are killed, and Mia is targeted by would-be assassins. It makes her more determined. Mia is an enigma, her inner character only partially revealed via child-made drawings on a wall and a daring taunt tossed at Leon Panetta (James Gandolfini), where she declares herself the “mother fucker” who found the mastermind of 3,000 deaths. She also makes a crack at him over lunch, and constantly hounds her supervisors. She is one rocking red head. Angry.

The backlash against this film is insanely grotesque. Many liberals want a neon sign damning torture as bad. Poor dears. Conservatives just hate the idea bin Laden went down on Obama’s watch. Jack asses. Both are off-base, lost between ignorance and delusion, and not a little denial. 

The last hour, where bin Laden -– barely seen -- meets his end, is flat-out riveting in its stark matter-of-fact rawness. Like the great book “No Easy Day” by SEAL Team Six member Mark Owen, “Zero” somberly lays out the cards of today’s reality. Here, flatly stated, no holds barred, it says we torture to get intel, and then we act on it. To save the day, or so we hope. Sure Bush, Cheney, and our current government call it, what, “enhanced interrogation techniques”? A quick note: As with any film, dramatic license is taken, most especially during this climatic raid of the bin Laden compound -- see, Bigelow and Boal have their SEALS talk -- talk! -- inside the chopper as they approach their target, and then on the ground -- shouting and what not -- and that stuff never happens. Silence, always. Any one remotely familiar with Army tactics knows that. Paint ball war enthusiasts know that. You shout, talk, yell, you might as well draw a hand flare to bring on enemy fire. It is a small, but significant deviation.

“Hurt Locker” and every film ever made, including “Lincoln” take dramatic license, add a flare, a chase, a drink, a conversation. It is drama. That does not take away from the case of the film, the depths America goes, and likely has gone in the past, but never debated. Damn sure in World War II, enemy combatants I am sure were ... interrogated to the fullest extent. 

And how does that stack against the terrorists? Have we sunk to their level? Recall the days when Saddam in Iraq caught our airmen, he was beaten and tortured. The U.S. balked. Now we do that, and call it patriotic duty to God. I know people in the Army who have looked me square in the face and say they witnessed it, and it works. Do they not lie, I ask. To get out of the pain? Sure, they say. But you compare the different lies to find the truth. Morality, mercy has no bearing. This is the way it is for them, no questions.

If Iran or Syria did these acts to our troops, bombs would fall. Rage would flame across America. Fact. Hell, yes, it's disturbing to see here, the shit and piss, the man stuffed in a box like laundry. The food games. The dog walk scene. They ought to make any sane viewer cringe, to hate the action on screen. Boal and Bigelow do not allow us to flinch, and we are forced to watch, and see it eat up the perpetrators, and they allow us to maybe, just maybe, see -- most disturbingly -- into the mindset that it is worth the price. 

They do not judge, or comment, or place in mock-shocked characters. They want the anger, the debate. The critics be damned, let them foam. And what happens? They get investigated. They. Get. Investigated. By our Congress. To squash any talk on torture. It is a sick ironic twist of our new American values.

As with “Lincoln,” this is a vital film that transcends Hollywood entertainment. It’s a mirror of our grim reality. And Mia -– based on a real CIA agent, but also fictionalized and combined with the actions of others like her -– is our best hope of a good future. Chastain carries the film on her back, her final scene tearing the lid open on her greatness as the leading actress of her generation. yes, she is an agent, but she is no super spy. She does not pop a gun, kick butt, or go James Bond. Her weapons is her brain, her determination, he eye for detail and language, and a laptop. The new weapon of our day, the laptop.

Bigelow is making the best war films of our time. She is tackling the effects of violence on our warriors and nation, not mindless gun porn. Wonderfully ironic as our military finally allows women into combat, and conservatives blanch hard about old-time values: A

The Bourne Legacy (2012)

“The Bourne Legacy” is an apology of a movie. After three films as the Robert Ludlum-created 007 agent on steroids Jason Bourne, unlikely bad-ass Matt Damon passed on a fourth film after his director of Parts 2 and 3, Paul Greengrass, sneered at another go-round. That did not stop the studio. The film’s tagline shouts “There Was Never Just One” in a faux shocker as, duh, we all knew that already. So, enter Jeremy Renner (“Hurt Locker”) as Aaron Cross, another super super-agent who finds himself, very Bourne like, hunted by the dastardly CIA suits out to cover their own asses for reasons to complex to explain. That’s the problem right there: It’s the same story, down to the terrified female pal (Rachel Weisz). Director/writer Tony Gilroy (he wrote the previous films) tosses in countless references to Damon/Bourne in CNN shots, photos, shouted oaths, and –- in a ridiculous scene -– a carved signature under a bunk bed, not much as a tissue connector, but regret. “We miss Matt, too!” Forget the tired chase plot and the blank ending, if the movie wants to hook back up with the ex, why care about the new guy? C-

Argo (2012)

Ben Affleck’s directing career has hit orbit. “Agro” is the crazy/ genius/brilliant/true tale of CIA agent and the Iranian Hostage crisis of 1979. I was five. “Star Wars” defined me. Thousands of miles away, Iran burned under a sick and violent Islamist dictatorship. Our embassy was rushed by zealots out for blood. Hostages were taken. The world panicked. War considered. A ray of hope unbeknownst to us: Six Americans escaped and hid inside the home of the Canadian ambassador, blind from Iranian grip. (Chris Terrio’s crackling script takes liberties here, as the six were split up. But never mind that.) How to extract the six? Enter CIA agent Chris Mendez (Affleck) and a bold plan: Ferret the group through the main airport as a “Star Wars” rip-off film crew, all under the Iranian Army’s watch. Pumped with tense drama, and dark political and Hollywood humor, “Argo” may be 2012’s best film, gripping and ingenuously played from the start. Affleck as a Hispanic-American is bullocks, but 10 minutes my qualms fell silent.The kicker: Our 2012 is no different, outside of shaggy hair and five channels. “Star Wars” still defines me, our embassies fall to madness, and Iran burns. I love this film.  A

Abduction (2011)

No one gets abducted in “Abduction,” but for a “Bourne Identity” Junior knock-off staring the scowling werewolf from “Twilight,” I guess the title “Who’s My Daddy?” would not drag in the non-teenage fans, huh? It’s almost unfair to dub “Abduction” a “Bourne” knock-off, it’s a boot-licking mash note that name drops Matt Damon. The plot: High school misfit Nathan Parker (Taylor Lautner) learns from a missing children website that he is not quite himself. Just as Nathan confronts his “parents” (Jason Isaacs and Maria Bello), goons storm the suburban home. Guns blaze! Mom down! Dad down! Boy on the run, with a gal (Lilly Collins of “Mirror, Mirror”) in tow! See, Serbian terrorists set up the very website knowing that one day Nathan would visit it and flee right into their insidious trap to outsmart Nathan’s real father, a brilliant ex-CIA agent. Whew! Why not a Craig’s List ad? John Singleton directs on snooze, his “Boyz ’N the Hood” days long gone. Lautner acts listlessly here as he does in “Twilight.” Suspense? Zero. Unintended laughs? A villain warns, “There’s a bomb in the oven!” and our heroes run to check the oven! Hilarious. C-

Safe House (2012)

“Safe House” is another corrupt CIA thriller that plays with the Hollywood rule that if a hotshot star (Ryan Reynolds) is the young hero and a middle-aged actor (Brendan Gleeson) of Oscar-winning fare plays the mentor/father figure, then the former must pop a lot of James Bond stunt work as the latter plays cool and adds another villain to his resume. Seen “Recruit”? This is it, again. Spoiler? No. “Safe” takes no chances and delivers just as many thrills, its script also Xeroxing “Training Day.” How so? Denzel Washington is back in bad-ass mode as Tobin Frost, a rogue CIA agent who lands under the care of Reynold’s Boy Scout as they lock horns while fleeing across South Africa from countless assassins. Along the way Frost schools Reynolds’ agent about the grim life working for Langley. Washington brings grace Frost barely deserves, while Reynolds gets his grit on as a guy who can take car crashes, beatings, stabbings, and a broken heart all in stride and still outsmart all his bosses. The character is so magical he could send Gleeson’s Mad-Eye Moody’s fake eye rollin’. C-

The Recruit (2003)

When a brilliant hotshot (Colin Farrell) is recruited to join the CIA and his trainer/boss/mentor looks and sounds and does that whole wiggy Al Pacino thing, and is, in fact, Al Pacino, something must be wrong. “I got a bad feeling about this” wrong. And, that’s “The Recruit,” a spy thriller from Roger Donaldson, who made the terrific 1980s mind-screw “No Way Out.” You know the way out here, though, because … did I mention Al Pacino? In a literal spotlight at one point? Sporting a goatee? This is by-the-numbers with every twist underlined by a loud music cue, but it’s not a terrible affair. Pacino overacts with zeal, having fun showing the whipper snappers on set (Farrell, Bridget Moynahan) how you spook the guys behind the cameras and holding the boom mikes. Drinking while watching? Take a shot every time Farrell loses the American accent. And, yes, I skipped a plot summary. (Al Pacino.) C+

The Double (2011)

Richard Gere is the sole reason to watch “The Double,” a spy thriller that moves the Cold War to modern day, and slings out plot twists with the excitement of mail delivery. Gere plays Paul Shepherdson, a retired CIA agent (drum roll) called back into action after a senator is slain with the exact M.O. of a Soviet assassin that Shepherdson swears he killed. So the hunt is on, with Shepherdson in the lead, and a rookie desk-jockey FBI agent (Topher Grace) in tow. Director/writer Michael Brendt and co-writer Derek Haas (they wrote the recent “3:10 to Yuma”) seem to think they are making a conspiracy film akin to “Parallax View.” They are mistaken. That film vibrated with mind-screwing paranoia. From silly character reveals to foot chases through empty rail yards, and car chases at empty ports, “Double” cannot even compete with a slow episode of “24.” Gere half asleep, is far too good for this. Grace is laughable. The ending too ludicrous for words. C-

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

I read John Le Carre’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” long ago, and was stoked for a film version. That I barely remembered the plot helped. I was not bogged down as I watched Gary Oldman almost wordlessly soar to his best screen performance as the aging/defeated/solemn George Smiley, a spy who realizes his life was pissed away trying to dig up shit intel on the Russkies. The story: Oldman’s Smiley is tasked with finding a mole in The Circus, MI:6. His suspects include fellow spooks so high up, they hold onto power with an Iron Fist, their noses up the rear of the American CIA. As with many of 2011’s best films, this is a story of a person taking stock of his life and lost chances. This is a dark, grimy, and quiet film, startled with bloody violence. You can feel this film waft off the screen -- the dust and tweed jackets, and stink of a rotting body. The mood is by director Thomas Alfredson, the woefully hurried complex screenplay by the late Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, a married couple. This is no feel-good “Mission: Impossible” thriller, but a spy-mood killer, and a damn good one. A-