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For fans of Spy Kids who have grown up a bit, there's Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker, a tale of a dashing British teenage spy.
Based on the popular series of novels by Anthony Horowitz, who also wrote the screenplay, Stormbreaker is an entertaining, if predictable, romp with a handsome junior James Bond in training (Alex Pettyfer).
Pettyfer plays a 14-year-schoolboy also named Alex who is recruited to become a spy after his uncle (Ewan McGregor), whom he believed to be a bank manager, goes missing.
Alex learns his uncle was actually a British special agent who had been training his nephew for a career as a spy by honing Alex's skills in mountaineering, martial arts and scuba diving. Alex attends an accelerated boot camp for spies, a tedious segment when contrasted with some fairly exciting chase sequences and a panoply of gadgetry.
Fortunately, this is no Agent Cody Banks across the pond. Though Alex engages in some youthful pranks (this movie is targeted to tweens and young teens, after all), he also matches wits and moves with adult spies. He is assigned to infiltrate a company run by an eccentric tycoon (Mickey Rourke with a George Hamilton tan and blue eye shadow). Once Alex is undercover, the millionaire's creepy assistant (Missi Pyle) keeps a menacing eye on him.
The film has a surprisingly illustrious cast of British character actors in cartoonish roles: Bill Nighy, sporting a pencil-thin mustache as the quirky head of the British special-operations unit; Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) as Nighy's smarter, kinder next-in-command; Robbie Coltrane (Harry Potter's Hagrid) as the British prime minister and Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings' Gollum) as a sinister man of few words. Stormbreaker also stars Sarah Bolger (In America) as a schoolmate of Alex's who assists him in some risky derring-do.
Though the film is not terribly original (and features a jarringly miscast Alicia Silverstone as Alex's nanny), the action scenes are diverting, the veteran cast is amusing and the engaging Pettyfer makes a solid debut.
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