Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker

It's better than some James Bond movies--no matter what your age.

Despite a relatively paltry $40 million budget, Stormbreaker has the sheen and special effects of a Bond movie, and the ambition as well.

A bland Bond.

Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker is "Agent Cody Banks" played British and kinda straight -- that is, as straight as you can when your villain, who dispatches foes with a giant jellyfish, is played by a toothpick-chomping Mickey Rourke in purple eye shadow.

This lame teenage James Bond will leave audiences neither shaken nor stirred.

It's ostensibly an action movie, and the action is so poorly shot as to be embarrassing.

While it's filled with quality actors, this James Bond tale for tweens feels like something you should be getting for free on television.

You might want to forget about its existence when it was released to theaters because that's how Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker went when people saw it in theaters.

Never should have made this into a movie. Atleast like this, this kid's movie with terrible acting and stereotypical accents (German accents are not so-called vampire accents), and also with very low-budgeted visual and sound effects.

"Stormbreaker" is a high-profile bust. Opening July 21 in Blighty, amid much hoopla as a "homegrown" blockbuster, film pulled a disappointing $2.3 million from 370 screens the first weekend and looks to wilt fast once word gets out, even among Rider fans. Horowitz’s young-adult novels, centered on a 14-year-old school boy who becomes an agent for MI6, have a semi-believability that’s completely vanished in this first screen version, scripted by the author himself. Mulched down into standard action fare, and directed by TV vet Geoffrey Sax (“White Noise”) as if he’s analyzed every Hollywood blockbuster of the past 25 years, pic emerges as a coldly calculated exercise in mid-Atlantic filmmaking that’s unsure exactly who its audience is. This is a British “Spy Kids” without the fun, or a teenage “Johnny English” without the humor. Not helped by a wooden perf from (then 15-year-old) newcomer Alex Pettyfer as Rider, pic yoyos between eccentric supporting perfs by locals (Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, Stephen Fry), who try to squeeze some laughs from the witless script, and bemused perfs by Yank guests, Mickey Rourke (as a mixed-race villain), Alicia Silverstone (as a housekeeper called, uh, Jack) and Missi Pyle (as a distant relative of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS). Luckiest thesp is Ewan McGregor who, as Rider’s largely-absent uncle, Ian, doesn’t survive the opening credit sequence. Turns out Ian prepared his nephew for an MI6 career by interesting him in scuba diving, martial arts and foreign languages. Soon after Ian bites the dust, courtesy of Russian villain Yassen Gregorovich (Damian Lewis, in pic’s only effective perf), Rider is recruited by MI6 boss Alan Blunt (Nighy) and his deputy, Mrs. Jones (Sophie Okonedo). Prior to this, young Rider has chased bad guys through London on his mountain bike, escaped from a car crusher, defeated five meatheads with his kung-fu, and stumbled on MI6’s underground HQ. So aud already knows he’s not an average school boy. Script then double-underlines this with an unnecessary training sequence in Wales, where he’s officially dubbed “a lethal weapon.” Story finally comes into view around the midway mark, as Rider visits Darrius Sayle (Rourke, extravagant) at a Blofeld-like HQ in the wilds of Cornwall. There, he uncovers a plot involving rigged computers by the dusky villain and Gregorovich. Aside from the dialogue, which doesn’t have one decent laugh in it, no attempt is made by Horowitz to capitalize on Rider’s youth in an original way. Upper-crust kid seems to have no weaknesses and operates as simply a teen version of James Bond, sans the wise-cracking charm and sexual frissons. He’s given a g.f. of sorts (Sarah Bolger), but only so he can use her horse in the finale. Tech package and action staging are slick but impersonal; color processing on the print caught was cold and unattractive. Andrew MacRitchie’s restless editing and Alan Parker’s booming music both add to the feeling of being beaten into submission by a relentless machine.

Average fare floating in the sea of washed away movies. It tried to be like James Bond, but was so patted with kid gloves and bubble wrap around the edges that it came off as too overprotective, like the kind of movie a kid's mom would suggest instead when he/she wanted to see Skyfall.

Another teenage money-in-the bank movie, cheesy as hell. Alot of money spent into it, no doubt about it, but the story is lacking. Another movie that ruins a great books reputation cover. Do not watch this for the book, but only if you enjoy teenage spy films with oneliners and uniteresting characters.