November 21, 2008: Stormbreaker
Having a child in my household, aside from making playing with Lego an acceptable use of time for an adult, brings into view a selection of books and movies which might otherwise never have surfaced in my consciousness. This also means a certain amount of taking the bad along with the good. The “Alex Rider” series of books, written by Anthony Horowitz, has resulted in the 2006 movie Stormbreaker (or Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker).
This film is clearly aimed at kids, although not particularly young ones. Alex Rider is a teenager with a complicated back story around who his parents are and why his uncle raised him, and in this initial story he finds himself caught up in secret service-style work as he is compelled to avenge a relative and save the world from a megalomaniac bent on controlling the world’s weather. What we’re looking at is a James Bond style character with whom kids can identify.
I watched this movie an audience who had read the book, so there was a running commentary on how the movie differed from its source material. I like this, since the differences between books and their adaptations are of interest to me, and this way I won’t have to actually read it if I don’t want to. The differences were mostly to accommodate typical page-to-screen trickiness, along with some aesthetic changes.
Ultimately, I found the story to not be very believable, but of course that same charge could be leveled at any Bond movie and it wouldn’t be taken as a bad thing (wait for the review of Quantum of Solace). I didn’t think much of the whole thing, but I don’t think it was unusually bad for what it was. Kids who are unfamiliar with the source material will find it similar to and maybe better than other entries in the genre, notably the Spy Kids series. Kids who have read the book will, like with the Harry Potter series, be able to immerse themselves in the story and experience a greater depth of understanding of the characters which comes from reading a book before seeing the movie.
I should take a moment to single out Mickey Rourke as the villain of the story. He’s virtually unrecognizable these days after many years of bad plastic surgery, and the eyeliner worn in this film only pushes him further over the edge into grotesqueness. The performance is wooden and predictable, and this is characteristic of the type of work he’s done in recent years. With the recent critical praise heaped onto The Wrestler, it makes me think about how much acting talent is out there, how difficult it must be for an actor to find the perfect part, and what work ends up being done in the meantime.
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