Espionage

If Looks Could Kill

/ / Home Video
  • Title: If Looks Could Kill (1991)
  • IMDb: link

If Looks Could Kill

Released six years before Mike Myers would bring Austin Powers to life in a spy parody about a man literally out of time, Richard Grieco stars as a high school student thrust into the spy world in the most unlikely way possible. Flashback Friday looks back at 1991’s If Looks Could Kill.

The movie has a little bit of everything for Bond fans including Linda Hunt in the role of an evil henchwoman playing homage to Lotte Lenya‘s Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love. We also get Roger Rees as the typical evil businessman seeking world domination, plenty of spy gadgets, beautiful women including Gabrielle Anwar and Geraldine James, fast cars, and a tongue-in-cheek plot where the villain is literally crushed to death by his own greed.

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The Bourne Ultimate Collection

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, Jason Bourne, The Bourne Legacy
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link

The Bourne Ultimate Collection Blu-ray reviewThis six-disc set collects all four of the Jason Bourne movies (The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Jason Bourne) along with the single spinoff starring Jason Renner (The Bourne Legacy) as another member of the same secret government program. While the first film, the closest to Robert Ludlum’s source material where an amnesiac Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) left for dead discovers he’s an assassin, remains my favorite, all of the films hold up well (even Renner’s single film).

The series features strong supporting characters throughout Bourne’s attempt to learn the truth about his past including Joan Allen, Franka Potente, Clive Owen, Edgar Ramírez, and Alicia Vikander. Collected in one set, available on both Blu-ray and DVD, the movies include several of the short featurettes and audio commentaries from the previous releases along with a sixth bonus disc.

[Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Blu-ray $69.98 / DVD $38.89]

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Jason Bourne

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Jason Bourne
  • IMDb: link

Jason BourneLargely ignoring the events of The Bourne Legacy, Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass return to the Bourne franchise. In the years since The Bourne Ultimatum Jason Bourne has become a wandering nomad and underground street fighter. With his memories restored he lacks the purpose which drove him in the first three films of the series.

The return of Nicky (Julia Stiles) and her quest to expose the government’s new black ops programs will shock Bourne out of his malaise when she provides him additional information about Treadstone and his recruitment into the program asking questions he desperately needs answers to.

Resurfacing after years, Bourne immediately becomes the focus of a manhunt by CIA Director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) and his new hot-shot protege Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) who begins to wonder if the CIA wouldn’t be better off attempting to bring Bourne in rather than assassinate him. Vikander’s addition, similar to a younger version of Joan Allen‘s character from the third and fourth films (with a questionable accent), allows for some conflict within the CIA as to Bourne while setting up potential ally for our protagonist within the agency.

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Bridge of Spies

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Bridge of Spies
  • IMDb: link

Bridge of SpiesSet in a smaller world during a darker time, the latest collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks takes place at the height of the Cold War and is inspired by the real events concerning Brooklyn lawyer James B. Donovan (Hanks) who found himself thrust into the middle of international intrigue by agreeing to defend Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) in an American court of law. Spielberg’s humanism is certainly on display in a film that feels a bit like a throwback to his movies from the late 90s and early 2000s.

While dealing primarily with Donovan and the effects and consequences of his defense of Abel, Bridge of Spies also introduces two subplots which eventually will be woven into the main storyline. The first of these concerns U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) recruited by the CIA and shot down over the Soviet Union. And the last concerns an American economics student (Will Rogers) studying overseas during the erection of the Berlin Wall who gets in trouble while trying to help the daughter of his professor out of East Germany. Although competently presented, neither is as engaging as Donovan’s tale.

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Covert Affairs – The Complete Fifth Season

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Covert Affairs – Season Five
  • wiki: link

Covert Affairs - The Complete Fifth SeasonAnnie Walker‘s (Piper Perabo) spy adventures come to an end in the final season of Covert Affairs. The Fifth Season introduces a new love interest for Annie in Ryan McQuaid (Nic Bishop), whose guilt or innocence in a terrorist plot against the United States takes up a big chunk of the season, and sees Annie leave the CIA over medical issues the Agency feel could compromise her effectiveness in the field.

Highlights include the season premiere which introduces McQuaid and brings Annie back into the CIA following her takedown of Henry Wilcox (Gregory Itzin), Annie going to work for McQuaid, Amy Jo Johnson joining the cast to investigate the Chicago bombing, Annie and McQuaid’s trip to Caracas, the final appearance of Eyal Lavin (Oded Fehr), Auggie (Christopher Gorham) getting lost in a conspiracy, the struggle to prove McQuaid’s innocence, Auggie’s abduction and torture by Aleksandre Belenko (Shawn Dowyle), the revelation of how Annie spent her summer, the return of Natasha (Liane Balaban), trips to Paris and Azerbaijan, and the final two episodes of taking down Belenko.

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