New ‘Fantastic Four’ film a lazy sequel

In theaters

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER, directed by Tim Story, written by Don Payne and Mark Frost, based on the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, 95 minutes, rated PG.

Tim Story’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” is a big-budget bust, and while it isn’t as awful as its lame 2005 predecessor, it does come close to achieving the former film’s sense of decay. Nothing in “Surfer” thrills or captivates as the best superhero movies do. It’s trite and self-indulgent, with Don Payne and Mark Frost’s bum script generating no mystery, nuance or compelling sense of dread.

The lack of the latter is especially curious since the plot involves the end of the world, with Earth rapidly being destroyed by the Silver Surfer, a gleaming extraterrestrial with a tight bod and the voice of Laurence Fishburne who surfs the globe looking like Mercury stripped down for an Abercrombie & Fitch ad.

Naturally, it’s up to the Fantastic Four to shut this dude down, which proves difficult to do for a whole host of reasons. There’s the evil Dr. Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon, preening like a peacock at the center of the farmyard), who presumably was quashed in the last film but who’s back for more meddling this time around.

There’s the Four’s mounting celebrity, which is intrusive to all but the Human Torch (Chris Evans), who enjoys his fame to the point of isolating those around him. And there’s the pending marriage between the dullest couple in the universe – Dr. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) – who are given to squabbling and canoodling in ways that rub the screen raw with fatigue. As for The Thing (Michael Chiklis), he’s reduced to weak comic relief and loud belching – elements that, in this movie, can allow for an actor to steal the show.

Any diehard comic book fan knows that the excitement which occurs within the pages of a comic book doesn’t necessarily translate to the screen. The first “Four” underscored that notion with big, messy broad strokes. This lazy sequel follows suit.

Throughout “Silver Surfer,” you never once feel that a trace of pleasure went into its production, as you did with one of the best examples of the superhero genre, Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.”

That film was smart and beautifully crafted beyond reason. It respected its audience and thus it deepened its franchise with a fully realized vision that “Four” never mines. If it’s too much to ask Story, his writers and producers to take the Four into exciting new directions – and it’s absurd to think that they shouldn’t, or that fans don’t deserve that movie – then the series forever is going to be mired in a depressing malaise of stupidity and cliches.

Grade: D+

On DVD and HD DVD

BREACH, directed by Billy Ray, written by Adam Mazer, William Rotko and Ray, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

It’s spy vs. spy in the thriller “Breach,” though only one spy knows that something is afoot. The other is left to suspect, with the film’s tension mounting from his growing suspicion.

Directed by Billy Ray from a script he co-wrote with Adam Mazer and William Rotko, the film generates a quiet grip, gently tightening its plot until the noose of intrigue it weaves becomes impressively unshakable. That’s no small feat, particularly since the movie’s outcome is so well known going into it.

Set on the cusp of 2001, the film stars Ryan Phillippe as Eric O’Neill, the real-life surveillance operative who was instrumental in bringing down Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), the senior FBI counterintelligence agent who sold security secrets to the former Soviet Union and then to Russia over the course of two decades.

For his trouble, Hanssen made more than $1 million in cash and diamonds, while the United States, facing its biggest and most embarrassing security breach ever, lost untold billions at the hands of Hanssen’s deceit.

The movie is as much about how Hanssen was brought down as it is about the man himself. Cooper nails the role. He doesn’t approach Hanssen as if he’s a mere monster – that would have been too easy. Instead, he understands that Hanssen was a hive of contradictions and thus he shades the character with all we’ve come to know about him. For instance, Hanssen was a staunch conservative and a devout Roman Catholic, attending Mass every day (and expecting the same from those close to him), and yet he also was a porn addict, freely distributing videos of him having sex with his clueless wife (Kathleen Quinlan).

With deceit at all levels seeping from his pores, it’s no wonder Hanssen was starting to come undone when into his life came O’Neill as his new clerk. Charged into that role by FBI agent Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney, rigid), who was one of 500 agents working to build a case against Hanssen, O’Neill’s youth and his lapsed Catholic background proved the perfect hooks to catch Hanssen off guard, though hardly without its share of problems for O’Neill.

Going into the job, he was told he was there only to keep tabs on a sexual deviant. Turns out that the FBI misled him and that the case was more far-reaching than that. What the talented Phillippe mines from this is his best, most convincing role to date, one that joins Cooper’s in that he rises above the script’s lapses into stock genre convention to focus on what really matters – the psychological complexities of O’Neill and Hanssen’s unusual relationship.

Grade: B+

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays and Fridays in Lifestyle, weekends in Television as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.