If the comic potential of the Central Intelligence Agency has only recently been tapped, and then mostly for wry satires, such as Burn After Reading, that present the agency as a plodding bureaucracy, the agency has long furnished Hollywood with a narrative matrix for action movies; one might argue that that is its only remaining effective function. That may have provided all the reassurance that the greenlighters needed when asked to approve This Means War, a romantic comedy involving blood-brother agents who like to kick, punch, and shoot at least as much as they care to fondle. Falling into a rivalry for the love of one woman, they turn the full range of their professional resources against one another in the pursuit of love.  

Being gentlemen, at least nominally, the agents decline to kick, punch and shoot at one another until the very end, when they finally indulge in one of their scene-clearing brawls. We know about these fights because the movie opens with one, and a subsidiary revenge plot that targets the agents keeps violence on the boil throughout the proceedings. I would like to say that Tom Hardy is a lot more convincing than Chris Pine at using his head rather than his fists in the pursuit of love, but I think I’m biased; I really like Tom Hardy. But I’m not sure that he has any more business in a comedy than Mr Pine does. With his eyes welling up with bruised affection, Mr Hardy is another kind of hero, and This Means War gives him the opportunity to play his long suit, in a subplot involving his son and ex-wife. Aha! Son and ex-wife! It’s a credit to the filmmakers, headed by a director called, simply, McG (boys! he’s Joseph McGinty Nichol, from Kalamazoo), that the one agent’s prior meaningful relationships do not forewarn us that the other’s lack of them has marked him for victory with Lauren, the lady in question, played gamely by Reese Witherspoon. That may be because the romantic aspect of the film is taken up largely by Lauren’s inability to decide between two so evenly-matched specimens of manly hunkitude. Her confidant is a married woman played by an actress who seems to be running an independent comic shtick, in the venerable tradition of Eve Arden. This friend has a foul mouth and spouts bad advice. She is the last person in the world that Lauren would plausibly listen to, but this departure from likelihood matches the handling of the CIA, whose acronym in this movie might as well stand for “Cartoon Intelligence Agency.”

Aside from the fisticuffs, which are so fast and furious that my eyes couldn’t follow the action, This Means War is so neatly made that, language aside, it could have starred Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Sneer not: Angela Bassett and Rosemary Harris have pungent if lean supporting roles. There are some very funny moments, especially when each of the lovers has to sit through a critique of his charms that has been surreptitiously recorded by the other. This amusing twist on the focus group is all the more piquant because Lauren is an analyst of consumer products who knows her onions as well as her suitors know theirs. At the climax, when the bad guy is about to mow down the romantic trio with a bulletproofed SUV, Lauren calls out to the boys to shoot out the headlights, because on all late models of this particular vehicle, a broken headlight triggers the airbags. This information not only saves our friends but puts an end to the villain’s life of crime. When the smoke clears, Lauren proclaims her choice with an embrace, and Tuck (Mr Hardy), revealed by TV news coverage of the climactic mayhem to be something other than a travel agent, is reunited with his ex-wife and son.

So that’s Chelsea Handler!

***

Halfway through The Starboard Sea, the story picks up momentum and the writing becomes less displeasing, but I’ve found at least two misplaced modifiers, and one of them is delicious. It contains it own little time machine. Because the sentence can be construed as grammatically correct when it’s read out of context, I’ll have to set the scene.

     The girls had a two-bedroom suite with a view of the Public Gardens. Though the hotel wouldn’t serve us alcohol in the restaurant, they were happy to send liquor up to the room. First we raided the minibar. Then we ordered a stash of top-shelf liquor.
      Within minutes of being in the suite, teams of crew jocks began flooding the room.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 at 9:03 am.