2014 - JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT, another reboot

An attempt to reboot the Tom Clancy "Jack Ryan" series with a new plot and a new cast.  The last try was with Ben Affleck as Clancy in The Sum of All Fears.  This one has what the studio considered to be a hot young cast, Chris Pine and Keira Knightley,  Throw in a couple of veterans, Kevin Costner and Kenneth Branagh with Branagh directing and I'm sure everyone thought they had another potential franchise.

What the studio got was just an OK spy thriller.  There's nothing particularly bad about this film but it's just a "seen it all before" spy movie with the usual fight scenes, sneaking around stuff and a last minute race to stop a terrorist attack on New York City.

Chris Pine and Keira Knightley are the leads.  The chief problem with them is their complete lack of chemistry as a couple.  Also, the script has to do a lot of contortions to get them together for the big spy mission  it really makes no sense she would follow him to Russia for a romantic weekend and frankly hurts the credibility of the plot.  Branagh is the Russian bad guy in this film.  He's got the smooth sophisticated evil super villain down but if you've seen any James Bond films at all you've seen this character before.  

The action scenes are OK but again nothing special.  This film ends up being strictly a time killer not good, not bad, really not anything.

105 minutes written Adam Cozad and David Koepp.

2011 - THOR, another Marvel superhero film.

Thor was always at the bottom of the stack of comic books at the barber shop when I was a kid.  It had something to do with a guy who threw a hammer at people.  Thor the film is pretty much the same thing at the bottom of the stack.

The film features a couple of Academy Award winning "where's my paycheck" actors, Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins.  Thor is probably the first and hopefully last film with the credits, Marvel Comics and Kenneth Branagh linked together.  Branagh is a smart guy and probably knew that signing on for this would make him a lot of money and give him some box office clout.

Thor is probably no worse or better than any of these other unending super hero films.  It has lots of CGI, over the top action scenes, a little humor with a couple of winks at the audience to let them know this is all kind of a joke and a running time that could have been shortened by at least 20 to 30 minutes.

One hates to use the cliche that the film was written by a committee, but this really seems to be the case.  The film has at least 2 climax's and the usual odd ball casting choices with the legendary white bread Scandinavian home Asgard populated by black guys, oriental guys and british guys it's all very culturally diverse. 

Thor is extremely undemanding stuff and nothing to get very excited about.

114 minutes.