Storm Breaker (Movie only) (Stormbreaker (DVD))

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Stormbreaker (DVD)
Date:	25/09/06 (1440 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast and furious, good story

Disadvantages: Bit silly at times

If there's one thing you can bank on during a British summer, it's torrential rain. At least, that's how I felt on a particularly rainy day when on holiday in Great Yarmouth earlier this year. At least it was an excuse to slope off and watch a movie and with "Stormbreaker" getting good reviews, off we toddled to sit in comfort as the rain poured down outside. Teen spy movies have been in fashion in recent years with "Malcolm in the Middle" star, Frankie Muniz satiating an army of pre-pubescent James Bond fans' appetites with gadget packed shenanigans as "Agent Cody Banks" to compliment the "Spy Kid" franchise so successfully driven by Robert Rodriguez. I guess this is a genre that appeals across a whole cross-section of ages and tastes and with a PG rating and an accessible 93-minute run time, this was a good family show available to see during the day.

When teenager Alex Rider's (Alex Pettyfer) bank manager uncle (Ewan McGregor) is killed by another spy in a car crash, it soon becomes clear that he was secretly a superspy doing his bit for England and her national security. As the subsequent funeral unfolds, Alex is introduced to some strange characters that look nothing like stereotypical bank employees. Offered a job as an MI6 operative by the idiosyncratic, Mr. Blunt (Bill Nighy), Alex initially declines but as it dawns on him more and more that his uncle had been grooming him for spydom through his various hobbies (scuba diving, sharpshooting, martial arts), he finally relents with the help of an offer of a permanent visa for his legal guardian who is an illegal immigrant in the country. Having undergone his army training and passed with flying colours, his mission is to infiltrate the empire of Darrius Sayle (Micky Rourke) and find out what Sayle’s real plans are in donating 70,000 state of the art computers in the newly created Stormbreaker network to the schools of England. MI6 suspect Sayle of having a hidden agenda and it's up to the teen spy, Alex to unravel the plot.

There's an awful lot that works well with "Stormbreaker". First of all, the leads are nicely played by Alex Pettyfer and Alicia Silverstone as Jack Starbright. Pettyfer is a newcomer to the movie circuit with only a TV adaptation of "Tom Brown's Schooldays" to his name and it would have been easy to slip into something uber camp when playing a role like this. He manages to avoid that trap looking serious for the most part and convincingly dynamic when needed for the set pieces. The sequence early on in the movie where he pursues a truck that takes his uncle’s car away, peddling furiously on his racer into a breaker’s yard only to be cornered by the workers who he dispatches with some nifty martial arts is both imaginative and fresh. Silverstone never has to get out of second gear to play her role as Rider's guardian but she does add a welcome touch of glamour to proceedings.

As for the rest of the cast, then it's a role call of mainly British glitterati with Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, Stephen Fry and Robbie Coltrane all getting parts of some description. The menace in the movie comes from Mickey Rourke as Darrius Sayle although Rourke did look decidedly old in the movie and definitely got most of the camp lines that were going as well as a rather childish modus operandi. There's plenty of humour in the movie too with Nighy getting to deliver some dead pan, one-liners; Fry doing a passable impersonation of "Q" from the Bond movies doused in his customary caustic wit whilst Robbie Coltrane plays an implausible and slightly giddy Prime Minister. For an action movie, the film manages to adopt a very British feel to the whole affair. This may come from the UK locations used to film with some glorious shots of the London skyline as well as the Isle of Man being passed off as Southern English moors. Alternatively, it could be the British eccentricity that belies the plot that could have amounted to the same result.

There are some silly aspects that detract from the movie's credibility at times. The Portuguese Man-O-War in Sayle's tank looks about as terrifying as a stray goldfish at a fairground and Missi Pyle as Nadia Vole - Sayle’s henchwoman - looks like an outcast from “‘Allo ‘Allo”. She really couldn’t look and sound more like a Nazi Helga if she tried. Rourke is never entirely convincing as the mixed up Sayle and there is an ever-present feel of low budget, British production about the whole movie. Moreover, the characters are never really developed to any large extent as a result of the non-stop action sequences but then this is hardly a cranial affair with a finale that’s extended for too long.

Amongst all of the action, Geoffrey Sax does a reasonable job of bringing a mainly family movie to life with an almost cartoonish feel to proceedings for the most part, brought to physical reality at one point during a fight scene that plays out alongside cartoon violence on TV. With fast-paced editing actually allowing the audience a clear view of what's happening, the director takes his recent work on “White Noise” and turns the practical necessity of a movie like “Stormbreaker” into a breakneck reality. Sax’s imagination makes for inspired sets at times, none more so than the photo booth that Rider encounters on his way to finding the headquarters of MI6.

Not that I’ve read any but the movie is inspired by the Anthony Horowitz books about Alex Rider and his adventures and I’ve read that the movie does a good job of recreating the feel of the teen-spy concept established in Horowitz’s work. The movie features some suitably cool music tracks just in case you’d missed the fact that this was a celebration of the powers of teendom including “I Predict A Riot” by Kaiser Chiefs, "Feel Good Inc." by Gorillaz and "Ready Steady Go" by Paul Oakenfold

All in all, I really enjoyed “Stormbreaker”. It’s innocent enough with plenty of fun to drive the mood along as well as having lots of British panorama to admire as a setting for all that US-British acting talent that makes the movie. I can’t help thinking that this is just the start of yet another spy movie franchise. My lovely wife and two children enjoyed the diversion from the rain outside and we were glad we’d taken the chance to go and see the movie. In fact, our very own storm breaker.

Thoroughly recommended for teen/family viewing with 4 stars.

Thanks for the read

Mara

Summary: Overview of Stormbreaker