Category: Other Spy Movies
Podcast Episode
OPERATION MINCEMEAT Quick-Fire Review – No Spoilers
Join Tom Pizzato as he gives you his no-spoiler review of the just released movie Operation Mincemeat. It's all about deception.
Deception: As spy movie fans, we know that deception is a key ingredient in espionage.
In World War II, the British tried many different forms of deception. One of the most impactful deceptions from that war has inspired plot points in James Bond movies and was a key driver to the creation of the Hitchcock classic North by Northwest.
Deception also is the basis of the just-released movie Operation Mincemeat.
Join Tom Pizzato as he gives you his no-spoiler review!
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BLACKLIGHT – Our no spoiler, quick-fire review
Contributed by: Dan Silvestri and Tom Pizzato - Spy Movie Navigator
Posted on
The Plot
The official website for the Blacklight says: “In BLACKLIGHT, LIAM NEESON is Travis Block, an operative whose discovery of a dark secret pits him against the FBI director he once swore to protect.” So, he’s an operative for a government agency and will have a conflict with his boss. Yeah, we’ve seen that before. Travis Block, played by Neeson is a “fixer” for FBI director Gabriel Robinson. When a deep-cover agent has a problem Robinson sends Travis to get them out. He works “off the books.” Block has known and trusted Robinson for a very long time. Robinson also kept Travis out of a heap of trouble in an incident when they served together in the Vietnam War. That gives us an important plot point. There is a subplot involving Travis’ relationship with his daughter, Amanda, and his granddaughter Natalie. Travis wasn’t a great father figure because he was gone all the time and is suspicious of everything. He tries to make amends with his granddaughter in this movie. We all know that in a Liam Neeson action movie you don’t mess with his family. We could be wrong with this, but we think this family thing was added after Neeson was hired. There wasn’t much reason for them to be there for the story. Neeson fans want him to go after whoever messes with his family so, from a marketing perspective, this makes sense. The next plot point we’ll mention could be considered a spoiler, but since it is in the trailer, we feel fine talking about it. The US government is killing innocent civilians under the guise of protecting democracy. This becomes central to the plot of the movie and is likely where the movie gets its name. We didn’t hear “blacklight” mentioned as a word in the movie. We might have missed it but we were listening for it. There is mention of infrared light, but they didn’t call it blacklight. We suppose the title was given as light was being shone on this government behavior. A reporter called Mira Jones starts to suspect this is happening and is given reason to believe it is true. She ends up meeting with Travis to try to figure things out. And that sets up the story.The Cast
The movie stars Liam Neeson as Travis Block, Aidan Quinn as FBI director Gabriel Robinson, Emmy Raver-Lampman as Mira Jones, Taylor John Smith as Dusty Crane, and Claire van der Boom as Travis’ daughter Amanda.The Influences
At Spy Movie Navigator we talk about how scenes in spy movies are influenced by other movies or by real-life events. So, let’s look at some of those influences. We’ll start this part of the discussion by saying this movie is pretty cliché. There are the obligatory vehicle chases, fistfights, a big plot twist, a subordinate having a problem with a boss, and since this is a Liam Neeson movie, an issue with his family. Those things are in most spy movies, so it is hard to pick scene by scene on those. One scene had what we think was a great call-back to both the James Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and the Harry Palmer movie, The Ipcress File. Travis Block shows up at his boss’ Gabriel Robinson’s house while Robinson is working in his garden. In The Ipcress File, Harry goes to Ross’ house as Ross is tending to his garden. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond goes to M’s house while M is tending to his butterfly collection. So, all three of these movies have the spy going to his boss's house while the boss was working on a hobby. We liked that touch. It gives a little more background into the characters. Plus, most spy movies don't show the lead spy at their boss's house. As for the vehicle chases, there are two major chases in this movie. One involves a Porsche vs some sort of Chevrolet SUV. We couldn’t tell the model. This was very cliché and somehow the Porsche couldn’t easily outrun the SUV. The second chase had Travis’ Dodge Challenger chasing a garbage truck. It was almost humorous the way the Challenger tried to battle the garbage truck. That said, we did like this chase. It was a nice twist on the chase trope. Speaking of Travis’ car: this Dodge Challenger was loud, like really loud. Yet, he would drive it to places where he needed to go unnoticed. It seemed like an odd car choice for him. Now, the most obvious call-back to scenes being influenced by other movies has to be with Travis’ family. From an action movie perspective, Liam Neeson is best known for the Taken trilogy. That’s probably also his best work in this genre. In those movies, he needs to find or protect a member of his family. The audience will expect something similar in this movie because, although Neeson’s character has a different name, it is still Liam Neeson’s character using his very particular set of skills. The trailer leads one to believe this is a huge part of the plot. In fact, before we saw the movie, we expected this Quick-Fire review to spend all of its time talking about how this was just another Liam Neeson-as-Bryan Mills movie. Well, fortunately, we were wrong about that part. There is still a family issue in this movie, but it doesn’t manifest itself until about 2/3 of the way through the movie. So, while important, it isn’t the main plot of the movie. That’s good in our opinion.Our Thoughts
So, what are our overall thoughts on Blacklight? Was that quote at the beginning of this review accurate? It wasn’t a terrible movie, but it was cliché and a bit boring for an action movie.What We Liked
Now, that said, let’s talk about some of the things we liked about Blacklight. The first highlight for us is Emmy Raver-Lampman who plays reporter Mira Jones. Although her part wasn’t well written (most of this movie has this problem), we liked Emmy in this role. You may know her as Allison in the Netflix series “The Umbrella Academy”. She was also on Broadway in “Hamilton” among other shows. We weren’t familiar with her and thought she did a very good job here. She stood out for us. Aidan Quinn was another high point. He’s an actor who always delivers good work. Again, his part wasn’t well written, but Quinn stole almost every scene he was in. Another actor who we want to call out is Georgia Flood who plays Pearl. This is a small role, but she lit up the screen every time she was on it. As for Liam Neeson, if you liked him as Bryan Mills in Taken, you’ll like him here. Yes, he is 69 years old and doesn’t run as well as he did in Taken, but he knows how to play that character. In our review of The Last Mercenary, we talked about how an older Jean Claude Van Dame could still deliver on his character-type, albeit a bit slower. The same thing holds here. The actor knows how to deliver this type of character, so age just means there isn’t quite as much oomph. We already mentioned that we liked the chase between the Challenger and the garbage truck. Another thing we liked was where they didn’t take us. And they almost did. The movie opens with a politician, Sofia Flores giving a speech. It was a typical left-leaning speech that we would expect from a Democratic candidate here in the US. She was quite obviously there to make the US audience think about U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or AOC as she’s usually called). It made us think “oh, oh”, this movie is going to be all about left-leaning politics, which in the US would irritate half the audience. They then balance that with the next scene where a, what we’ll call “a right-leaning mob”, has a deep-cover agent trapped in her motor home. This scene also had the biggest and best explosion in the movie. They could have taken these two scenes and created a preachy woke movie - and they didn’t. The conservative vs. the liberal rhetoric ended very quickly. Given the polarity of these types of topics in the US, it was good they moved off of it. We also liked the overall score. Mark Isham’s soundtrack works for this movie. Um, that’s about it in terms of the positives.What Went Wrong?
So, what was the movie’s problem? What didn’t we like? Mainly, in our opinion the script was weak. There wasn’t much to it. This could have easily been an hour or 90-minute made-for-tv movie instead of trying to be a Hollywood blockbuster. It was a ho-hum, “check off the list” of what a Neesom action movie has become. The screenplay was credited to Nick May, his first screenplay and it felt like it. Here are a few examples of some of the lines from the movie to back up our thoughts:- “Everything I did was for you”
- “You aren’t really going to shoot me” the response: “Yes I will”
- “I suspect I made a poor career choice”
- “If I find out you had anything to do with my granddaughter disappearing, you’re going to need more men”
- “You are my weapon. You work for me.”
A Few More Thoughts
There are a few additional things we’d like to quickly point out. The first has to do with the filming of this movie. Although the story’s location was Washington D.C., the movie was filmed in Australia. Given that, most of the supporting roles were played by Australian actors. We liked that. This was filmed during the COVID pandemic so that makes sense. Plus, we like to see local actors used in movies. Next, in the credits there was a team assigned to COVID issues. That was a sign of our times. We wonder what we’ll think of that if we rewatch this movie in a few years. And finally, the age of the audience was interesting to us. This is an action movie. And it stars 69-year-old Liam Neeson. Ok, this is a very, very small dataset to work with as there were only 5 other people in the theater when we went. We went to the 5:00 pm showing on the advanced viewing day. That said, I’m 59 and was at least 10 years younger than any of the other 5 people in the audience. Is Liam drawing an older audience than what we usually see for action movies, or was this an anomaly? We don’t know but it is an interesting data point to us. This Blacklight audience seemed a lot older than what was in the audience when we saw No Time To Die. We know the James Bond series is fighting their demographics and working to draw in younger viewers. Neeson may be struggling with that. So, let’s get back to the quote from that audience member about Blacklight that opened this article: “I was disappointed. It wasn’t really entertaining.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Dan Silvestri and Tom Pizzato are the creators of the website SpyMovieNavigator.com. We create podcasts, YouTube videos, and more focusing on spy movies. Our podcast and our YouTube channel share the name “Cracking the Code of Spy Movies”! You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@SpyNavigator), and Instagram too! And we welcome you to join our private Facebook group, The Worldwide Community of Spy Movie Fans!Podcast Episode
BLACKLIGHT- Quick-Fire No Spoiler Review
Join us as we are Cracking the Code of the movie BLACKLIGHT starring Liam Neeson. We'll guide you as to whether it is worth your time.
Another Liam Neeson action movie called Blacklight has just been released. Is it another sequel to the Taken series?
Join us as we are Cracking the Code of the movie Blacklight. We’ll answer that question and guide you as to whether it is worth your time.
Given that this is one of our Quick-Fire Reviews, there will be NO SPOILERS!
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Podcast Episode
The 355 – A Quick-Fire Review
Join us for our NO SPOILER review of THE 355, starring Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong'o, Penélope Cruz, and Bingbing Fan.
Exploding planes, destructive computer devices, agents with families, an international spy team, plot twists and more make up the first spy movie released in 2022, The 355.
Join us for our NO SPOILER review of The 355, starring Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, and Bingbing Fan.
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Podcast Episode
RED NOTICE: A Quick-Fire Review – No Spoilers!
Join us as we’re Cracking the Code of the just released Netflix movie Red Notice. No Spoilers!
Cleopatra’s Eggs, Deep Fakes, call outs to Indiana Jones, Mission: Impossible and James Bond, Ryan Reynolds playing, well Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson playing what he usually plays, and Gal Gadot playing a key role all lead us to our quick-fire no spoiler review of Red Notice.
Join us as we’re Cracking the Code of the just released Netflix movie Red Notice. No Spoilers!
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Podcast Episode
The Protégé – A Quick-Fire, No Spoilers Review
Join us for our quick-fire, no spoiler look at the new espionage movie The Protégé, starring Michael Keaton, Maggie Q, and Samuel L. Jackson.
Michael Keaton, Maggie Q and Samuel L. Jackson headline the just released (August 2021) espionage move, The Protégé.
Lots of relationships to other spy movies are highlighted including tropes, dialogue, style and more.
Here’s our Quick-fire, No Spoilers look at The Protégé!
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Podcast Episode
THE LAST MERCENARY – A Quick-Fire No-Spoilers Look!
Join Tom Pizzato in our no-spoiler Quick-Fire l look at the new spy movie that released at the end of July, 2021 - THE LAST MERCENARY!
Jean-Claude Van Damme is an old ex-secret agent, car chases, bullet-proof tuxedos, child/parent issues, a Big Mac, and a fun ending fight scene round out the latest Netflix spy movie release, THE LAST MERCENARY!
Join Tom Pizzato in our No Spoiler Quick-Fire podcast!
Subscribe to our Cracking the Code of Spy Movies show through your favorite podcast app, and on YouTube!
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BLACK WIDOW – a Quick-Fire , No Spoiler Reaction! – Video
Podcast Episode
BLACK WIDOW – a Quick-Fire, No Spoiler Reaction!
Join Tom and Vicky as have a no-spoiler discussion about the major release from Marvel, BLACK WIDOW which is out in theaters now, and steaming through Disney+ for subscribers who pay extra to see at release time.
Join Tom and Vicky as they talk about the major release from Marvel, BLACK WIDOW which is out in theaters now, and steaming through Disney+ for subscribers who pay extra to see at release time.
Tom and Vicky will give some viewing tips and insights, but NO SPOILERS!
Subscribe to our Cracking the Code of Spy Movies show right now through your favorite podcast app and don’t miss out on an episode you may love!
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Podcast Episode
Cliff Walkers – A Quick-Fire Look
Join us as we take a no-spoiler, quick-fire look into the latest spy movie, CLIFF WALKERS.
Join us as we take a no-spoiler, quick-fire look into the latest spy movie, CLIFF WALKERS.
Set in the 1930’s, CLIFF WALKERS is an espionage movie about four Chinese agents trying to extract a prisoner from Japanese occupied Manchukuo. There are numerous plot twists and double-crosses which should intrigue any spy movie fan.
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Podcast Episode
Spy Movies For Kids – behind the PG rating of SPIES IN DISGUISE!
In this 7 1/2 minute podcast, we look into the 2019 spy movie for kids, Spies in Disguise and show you why it has a PG rating.
In this 7 1/2 minute podcast, we look into the 2019 spy movie for kids, Spies in Disguise. This is a fun, family-friendly spy movie with a PG rating.
We know parents are always trying to understand the appropriateness of a movie for their children. Therefore, we crack the code as to what we think were the reasons for it’s MPAA rating of PG.
You can contact us at info@spymovienavigator.com. Please leave us a message and let us know what you think of this discussion. Are there other Spy Movies For Kids you’d like us to look into?
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Spy Movies For Kids – Spies In Disguise – Why Is It Rated PG? – Podcast Video
Related: 10 Spy Movies for Kids and Your Whole Family
Related: Spies in Disguise – A Quick-Fire Look
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Podcast Episode
The Courier – A No-Spoiler Quick-Fire Look
Join us as we take a quick-fire look at the spy thriller, THE COURIER, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Merab Ninidze!
Join us as we take a quick-fire look at the spy thriller, THE COURIER, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Merab Ninidze!
NO SPOILERS!!!!
This movie is based on the real-world Cold War events surrounding the British Salesman, Greville Wynne, and a Russian diplomat, Oleg Penkovsky.
So, listen as we discuss the major themes of the movie.
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Podcast Episode
TENET (2020) – A Quick-Fire Look
NO SPOILERS! SpyMovieNavigator's co-host, Vicki Hodges, lives in the UK and she saw Tenet on opening day there, August 26 2020. Here is a Quick-Fire look at the movie, with NO SPOILERS!
NO SPOILERS!
SpyMovieNavigator’s co-host, Vicki Hodges, lives in the UK and she saw Tenet on opening day there, August 26 2020.
Here is a Quick-Fire look at the movie, with NO SPOILERS!
So, join Dan, Tom and Vicki for this fun quick-fire look at Tenet!
In case you missed it, you can see the final trailer for Tenet here.
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Join Dan and Tom in Cracking the Code of My Spy – the first spy movie released by a major studio in 2020 – and it’s not in theaters! It’s on Amazon Prime!
The Quick-Fire Look will not giveaway the movie, but we will look at certain revelations and things to look for in the movie so you can enjoy it even more! Join us in our My Spy review!
All our Podcasts are at: https://spymovienavigator.com/spy-movie-podcasts/
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Podcast Episode
The Spy Next Door (2010)
Join Dan and Tom on their Cracking the Code of Spy Movies show. In this episode, they uncover some hidden connections in this fun comedy/spy movie for the whole family, The Spy Next Door!
This movie stars:
- Jackie Chan as Bob Ho
- Billie Ray Cyrus as Coltan James
- George Lopez as Glaze
- Amber Valletta as Gillian
- Madeline Carrol as Farren
- Will Shadley as Ian
- Alina Foley as Nora
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Podcast Episode
Spies in Disguise – A Quick-Fire Look
The latest animated spy movie just released. It's called Spies in Disguise. Tom and Dan Crack the Code of this spy movie and look at it's relationship to other spy movies.
Join Tom and Dan, Cracking the Code of Spy Movies as they take a Quick-Fire look at the animated kids’ spy movie, SPIES IN DISGUISE, looking at how it relates to other spy movies, the plot, music, and message! And there’s stuff in here for adults too!
Fun movie! Take a listen!
Click here to see the Official Trailer
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Spy Movies For Kids – behind the PG rating of SPIES IN DISGUISE!
The King’s Man – A Quick-Fire Review
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Podcast Episode
Charlie’s Angels (2019) – A Quick-Fire Look
Join Tom and Dan in Cracking the Code of Spy Movies! Here we take a Quick-Fire look at the new 2019 movie, Charlie's Angels and analyze its originality, what movies influenced it and what the overall impression is.
A new movie called Charlie’s Angels released in the US on 14-November-2019.
Join Tom and Dan in Cracking the Code of Spy Movies! Here we take a Quick-Fire look at the new 2019 movie, Charlie’s Angels and analyze its originality, what movies influenced it and what the overall impression is.
This is lively, so join us now!
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