Review: "Central Intelligence"

I like both Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson. They have winning personalities, beaming smiles and great screen presence. I’m not sure if either one of them is nearly as funny as he thinks he is, though.

It’s the same way with “Central Intelligence,” their new buddy cop comedy. It’s an agreeable picture with some outrageous jokes, wacky setups and a few harder-edged action scenes to spice things up. A laugh riot it is not.

Most of the attempted humor comes from Hart playing his type and Johnson playing against type. Hart, by virtue of his diminutive height and comedic personality, is always the nervous nelly trying to front that he is cooler/tougher than he really is. Johnson, playing a lot of hyper-masculine action roles lately, is a dweeb who loves unicorns, fanny packs and cinnamon pancakes.

This really is part of his cover as CIA agent Bob Stone. Formerly the fat kid in high school who was the subject of a cruel prank -- Johnson’s body is digitally morphed onto another actor’s body for the flashback -- he’s grown up into a tower of muscles who can take out a handful of bad guys without even blinking.

There’s no cockiness to him, though, and in fact Bob is in awe of Calvin “The Golden Jet” Joyner (Hart), the BMOC in high school who everyone looked up to. Flash forward 20 years and his promising life has turned into disappointment, a nowhere job in forensic accounting, a fantastic wife (Danielle Nicolet) but no kids. He’s just… stuck.

Bob shows up out of the blue and invites Calvin for drinks, which turns into a bar fight, which turns into a sleepover, which turns into CIA agents showing up on his doorstep claiming Bob is a rogue agent trying to sell vital intelligence to the highest bidder. From there the movie is a series of chases as Calvin tries to decide if Bob is on the level or not, in between fistfights and shootouts.

Amy Ryan plays the grim head spook who leads the hunt, and Jason Bateman turns up in an uncredited role as one of Bob’s former teenage tormentors who seems to have experienced a change of heart.

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber from a screenplay he co-wrote with Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen, “Central Intelligence” is all broad humor and telegraphed punchlines. For instance, when Bob encourages Calvin to replicate the backward flip he was famous for back in the day, we just know it’s going to come in handy during a pivotal fight scene.

They do manage to sneak in a few clever throwaway jokes, such as Bob calling Calvin a “snack-size Denzel” for his performance in fooling some bad guys. I also liked the quip where Calvin, after first witnessing Bob in action, refers to his non-badass attire, dubbing him “Jason Bourne in jorts.”

I can’t quite recommend this movie, but I didn’t hate it. It just needed to be funnier and not take aim at the most obvious jokes possible. Sass and charisma will only take you so far.

Video review: "Exodus: Gods and Kings"

Ridley Scott is one of my favorite movie directors, but it’s hard to deny the man is responsible for his fair share of duds. He’s had a bit of a string of them lately, usually as a result of trying to redo previous films that didn’t really need another iteration: 2010’s lackluster “Robin Hood,” the bewildering “Prometheus” from 2012.

“Exodus: Gods and Kings” is essentially Scott’s version of “The Ten Commandments,” with Moses and pharaoh Ramesses duking it out over the fate of the Jewish people, with plagues and miracles descending on high with equal fervor.

Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic hasn’t aged well – it plays now as a remarkable artifact of old-Hollywood hokum. But it wasn’t exactly crying out for a remake.

The result is a rather dull affair, with Christian Bale as Moses, a prince of Egypt revealed to be a Jew, spending years in his desert exile communing with the Lord, who takes the form of a small boy. Eventually he returns to Egypt and the predictable special effects fireworks crank up, along with plenty of battles. Here Moses wears armor and comes off closer to Spartacus than the robed holy man of scripture.

We’re further distracted by the heavily mascaraed presence of Joel Edgerton as Ramesses. Gosh knows I am not one to kowtow to politically correct imperatives. But casting an Australian as an Egyptian pharaoh is at least a 9.4 on the scale of White People Screwing Up Historical Stuff.

It’s a nice-looking film, with terrific costumes and sets and CG backdrops. As you’d expect of a Ridley Scott flick, the action scenes are staged crisply and energetically. But the characters all seem so glum and lifeless, as if they’ve been drained of their vital essence. Bale is so dirge-like in his disposition he makes his Bruce Wayne seem like a party animal.

Ultimately, “Exodus” fails the first test of filmmaking: why does this movie need to exist? It doesn’t, and we needn’t bother.

The movie is being given an excellent video release with a spate of bonus features, though you’ll have to pay more for the best stuff.

The DVD comes with eight deleted and extended scenes, plus a feature-length audio commentary track by Scott and co-screenwriter Jeffrey Caine. Upgrade to the Blu-ray, and you add another deleted scene and “The Exodus Historical Guide,” a feature-length trivia track.

Go for the 3-D collector’s edition combo pack, and you add an entire blu-ray disc of bonus features. These include “Keepers of the Covenant,” a feature-length documentary on the making of the film, a historical perspective on Moses, photo galleries, promotional featurettes and more.

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Review: "Need for Speed"

I like video games and I like cars and I like car racing video games and I certainly like movies, but I did not care for this movie based on a car racing video game.

The problem with "Need for Speed" is that it's a goofy flick with aspirations of being A Serious Drama, and those things don't really mix well. Much like the dreariest parts of the "Fast and Furious" franchise, whenever the characters aren't zipping around in souped-up machines, crashing and taunting each other, the movie gets stuck in neutral.

It is, in fact, much like a muscle car sitting in one place revving its engine very loudly: it seems kinda cool at first and certainly draws a lot of attention, but after a short time we get itchy to see the thing, y'know, go.

Aaron Paul, best known as the "bitch" guy from TV's "Breaking Bad," hasn't had much of a movie career -- though he had a strong supporting part in the indie drama "Smashed" from not long ago. He's got serious thespian chops, but this movie -- directed by Scott Waugh ("Act of Valor") with a screenplay by rookie George Gatins -- requires him to deliver a lot of ridiculous dialogue and smoldering stares that don't seem to have a whole heaping helping of intellect behind them.

I'm not saying Tobey Marshall is dumb, but he certainly acts pretty dumb.

Tobey runs a performance car shop in tiny Mount Kisco, New York (though Georgia and its ferocious film production tax credits stand in). His dad has recently died, the shop isn't doing well, but he's got an amiable crew of mechanics/best buds (Ramon Rodriguez, Scott Mescudi, Rami Malek, Harrison Gilbertson) to help pass the time.

They contrive to set up elaborate street racing events, including a guy monitoring traffic from a Cessna in the sky, though the cops are seemingly nowhere to be found. Tobey is the top dog on this little circuit, but he's never had a car good enough to make it to the Big Time, where here is defined as an annual underground race of supercars called the Deleon.

This race is organized by a secretive billionaire named Monarch (Michael Keaton), who reputedly was once a great racer himself but a bad ticker made him quit. Now he sits in a room full of tech gear, delivering daily vodcasts in which he encourages and/or rags on drivers, with an exclusive invite to the Deleon as catnip. Apparently, every single gearhead in the country tunes into Monarch, though law enforcement has not yet paid him any notice. Strange, that.

Here's where things get screwy. The prize for the winner of the Deleon is he gets to keep all the other racers' cars. Of course, if you've every actually played the Need for Speed games or seen any car movie ever, you know that most of the vehicles end up as smoking roadkill.

(Maybe Monarch got so rich because he never has to put up any prize money, and his only major expenses are Web hosting fees.)

The heavy is Dominic Cooper as Dino Brewster, a teen rival of Tobey's who stole his girl (Dakota Johnson) and made it out of their dink town to race on the Indy circuit, which of course begs the question of why he bothers with illegal street races that likely pay a small fraction of his legitimate racing income.

Whatever. Cooper is an appropriately sneering, contemptuous presence.

The Deleon actually ends up as largely an afterthought, as most of the film's running time is concerned with the initial face-off between Tobey and Dino, during which Very Bad Things happen, and then Tobey's race to drive across country in time to make it for Monarch's little to-do in California. The "race before the race" has all sorts of roadway encounters, including incompetent cops, murderous rednecks in trucks and a rescue off the end of a cliff that is just completely preposterous.

Imogen Poots plays Julia, a British car expert who tags along with Tobey for reasons that are never made entirely clear, other than just to have an adorable chick around. The movie's third main star is a special silver Ford Mustang, supposedly the car Carroll Shelby was working on with Ford before he died, which Tobey and his crew finish into a 234-mile-per-hour beast.

Of course, driving a custom-built car 3,000 miles across country at high speeds is a really great way to mess up the engine right before a big race, but "Need for Speed" is not the sort of movie to bother with verisimilitude. The 'Stang is pretty awesome, though I thought the '68 Gran Torino Tobey drives in the initial race even cooler.

The racing sequences are the best thing about the movie, as Waugh & Co. eschew over-the-top computer generated mayhem for practical car stunts, which give these scenes a certain amount of verve and heft.

The talkie parts, though, are so cumbersome, and eat up an astonishing portion of the film's overlong 140-minute run time.

At one point, Tobey and Dino finally have a face-off inside a hotel prior to their race, which involves lots of shoving and grappling and strained threats. "We'll settle this behind the wheel!" Tobey snarls, because that's where every car movie ends. All things considered, though, a punch in the nose would have been quicker, safer and more satisfying.

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Video review: "Breaking Bad: The Complete Series"

Television is in a really good place right now, with many people thinking the “small screen” offers more serious, ambitious content than do movie theaters. That’s true only if everything on TV were as good as “Breaking Bad.”

The reality is you don’t see a whole lot of truly awful movies these days, the harsh studio system weeding out anything not guaranteed to carry at least some audience appeal. Whereas television is best seen as an island of coal with a few diamonds peeking out here and there.

(Consider: for many years, “Two and a Half Men” was the top-rated comedy.)

The brainchild of Vince Gilligan is the ultimate gone-bad story. Over the course of five seasons (with the last actually split into two eight-episode runs), average milquetoast high chemistry teacher Walter White turns into the biggest methamphetamine dealer in the U.S.

Splendidly acted by Bryan Cranston -- who will eventually need a wheelbarrow for all his Emmy Awards -- the show was a prime example of a convoluted but intricately plotted story that could only be done in the “long form” of a TV series.

As one of the many people who caught up with the show by streaming it on Netflix, I will commit an act of heresy by saying that “Breaking Bad” probably is better experienced in languid regular stops than a massive binge. When you undertake the latter, certain defects in the plotting become apparent, such as an overreliance on happenstance and character behavior that varies with the needs of the storyline.

(Such as: Walter’s D.E.A. officer brother-in-law, Hank, failing to notice any of the 250-plus clues of erratic behavior by his wife’s sister’s husband.)

Still, a few weaknesses aside this was a truly audacious show, wildly ambitious and nearly always worthy of the high praise heaped upon it. With its heavy doses of symbolism, trademark innovative camera work and host of plot twists, “Breaking Bad” was television doing what TV does best.

Now you can own the entire 62-episode journey for yourself. “Breaking Bad: The Complete Series” features the entire show in a 16-disc set that includes nearly 50 hours of commercial-free episodes, plus 55 hours of bonus material. Or, if you prefer, just “Breaking Bad: The Final Season.”

Among the many video goodies is “No Half Measures,” a two-hour documentary on the making of the final eight episodes. There are also personal reflections by the cast and crew, profiles of fan favorites like slimy attorney Saul Goodman, storyboard comparisons, season retrospectives and much more.

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Review: "Smashed"

Ever since Ray Milland first showed us the sweaty shakes of a desperate drinker in "The Lost Weekend" nearly 70 years ago, alcoholism has been a favorite, recurring subject for Hollywood. "Smashed" doesn't really add anything innovative to the picture, but this indie drama is still an unnerving portrayal, buoyed by a terrific performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Probably the biggest departure is that the drunks in "Smashed" are not suicidal or obviously self-destructive, a la "Leaving Las Vegas." Rather, they're functional alcoholics who manage to hold jobs and have relatively stable lives, while consuming astonishing quantities of booze.

To Kate (Winstead) and her husband Charlie (Aaron Paul), drinking is a lifestyle choice, not an addiction. They were raised with boozing parents, drank socially all through their teens and early 20s, and have just kept the party going.

"Everyone I know drinks. A lot," Kate confides.

Director James Ponsoldt, who co-wrote the screenplay with Susan Burke, focuses on Kate, and it's through her eyes we glimpse her cherished sense of normalcy slowly crumbling. Charlie remains a secondary character, a good-hearted guy from a wealthy family who's never had to earn anything in his life. When Kate finally makes a vow to change her life for the better and swear off booze, Charlie isn't willing to make the same leap, forcing a heavy choice on her.

The story opens with Kate waking up hung over and running late for work. It turns out she's a first-grade schoolteacher, and a good one who brings genuine enthusiasm to the classroom. But her drinking catches up with her, and she vomits in front of her kids.

Worse yet, when one of the tykes asks if she's pregnant, she assents rather than tell the truth. Unfortunately, it gets back to her principal (Megan Mullally), and the small white lie blossoms into a parade of deceit.

Dave (Nick Offerman), a co-worker who's been sober for nine years, encourages her to go to AA meetings, and that's where things really move into a higher plane. Winstead's performance during her first talk is a mix of brutal honesty, fear and a touch of despair.

Here is a young, smart woman who's forcing herself to face up to the fact that the things she used to do for fun are increasingly becoming what is harming her. It's a revelatory scene, almost giddy in its honesty and authenticity.

Octavia Spencer has a strong, small turn as Kate's AA mentor, and Mary Kay Place shows up as her mother -- and a frightening glimpse into her own possible future.

At a crisp 81 minutes, the film leaves some areas underexplored, especially Kate's relationship with Charlie. But "Smashed" works as more of a harrowing character portrait than a full-throated narrative.

3 stars out of four