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Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker

2006, Movie, PG, 93 mins

Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker: Review

ALEX RIDER: OPERATION STORMBREAKER | STORMBREAKER
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If there's a pressing need for a teen version of James Bond-style spy tales, it's not apparent: Twelve-year-olds are already watching the real thing. That said, U.K. novelist Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider books are preteen best sellers and, as a way station between the SPY KIDS pictures and the hard stuff, director Geoffrey Sax's adaptation beats the stuffing out of the vapid CODY BANKS movies. Orphaned Alex Rider (Alex Pettyfer) has been raised by his uncle, globetrotting banker Ian (Ewan McGregor) and American housekeeper/factotum Jack (Alicia Silverstone) since childhood. Imagine Alex's surprise when, after Ian dies in a car accident, he learns that his uncle wasn't in the boring banking business at all — he was a sophisticated superspy. And his old employers at MI6 would like Alex to join the family business — does Alex really think Uncle Ian encouraged him to learn firearms handling, martial arts, wilderness survival and a mess of foreign languages just because young people should have hobbies? Alex eventually agrees to goes undercover — maybe it's the promise of gadgets — as a computer nerd to infiltrate the top-secret research facility of American billionaire Darrius Sayle (Mickey Rourke). Sayle is donating thousands of revolutionary "Stormbreaker" computers to Britain's schools, but MI6 suspects he's up to something because, well, it's their job to suspect people are up to something. Oh, and Uncle Ian was returning from his own undercover gig at Sayle's facility when he had that unfortunate "accident," so Alex would do well to be careful. Sax keeps things moving, but the best thing about the film is the British cast: Bill Nighy as twitchy MI6 boss Alan Blunt, Sophie Okonedo as a modern day Emma Peel named Mrs. Jones, Stephen Fry as Smithers, Alex's version of Bond's Q, who concocts top-of-the-line spyware behind the front of a high-end toy store, and Robbie Coltrane as the prime minister. Rourke and his pimpalicious wardrobe supply serious freak-show appeal. Pettyfer is only adequate as Alex, and his pouty-lipped good looks add a creepy, presumably unintended subtext to his encounter with icy Russian spy Yassen Gregorovich (Damian Lewis). Silverstone is awkward and unconvincing as the fiercely protective Jack, and fellow American Missi Pyle overplays her hand as high-heeled she wolf Nadia Vole, Sayle's goose-stepping bodyguard. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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