Nathan_Fisher

This movie is a VERY, VERY bad attempt to be like "Office Space". For one, Josh's character is unbelievable, at best. Second, there is no real plot other than Josh being assigned to mail out 17 letters ASAP and his failure to do so. Third, his supporting cast were statues with no real value.

This all begins with Josh talking to the audience for 10 minutes about his evil boss and his theories on work. He inexplicably breaks up with a gf 10 rungs out of his class, then mopes about it the rest of the movie. He then is assigned a job at a law firm and is offered to go "perm" (permanent). He suddenly feels trapped, as if he is committing to one place would wreck him, just like committing to his gf would wreck him. One hijinx after another, Josh must screw every simple task up, which becomes very weary to the viewer. Unlike "Office Space", this worker is just a loser, and you have little to no sympathy for him because he does it all himself. There is very little actual humor in this, but more subtleties that cause the viewer to drift at times.

This movie would have been better had it been more believable and adding more office humor in it, rather than just showing an unbelievable train wreck. For instance, give Josh an average girlfriend that stalks him occasionally and make him look paranoid at the office (his co-workers wouldn't believe he could get a stalker, which would lead to some actual humor). Add more office humor - explore the characters at the office, their behaviors, and their habits (Office Space did this well). Make him a millionaire or something by inheritance, and one condition of his trust is that he has to work 40 hour work weeks and he finds the most menial job he can. He struggles just to get to work in the morning and his attitude on working hard would make it believable that the 17 envelopes is a CHORE to him. Make the audience believe that the 17 letters is dependent on him losing his inheritance and the other office people want him gone so try to sabotage him at every possible time. Sort of like Drew Carey meets Office Space meets Billy Madison.

This movie had potential, but lost it about halfway through when it was evident there was no climax, only a screwed-up loser with a fear of commitment. The humor was few and far between.

Good Advice is a movie I accidentally turned on one night on HBO and was intrigued from the first moment on. I thought this was a very good role for Angie Harmon, as a strong, yet vulnerable woman. Charlie Sheen was very charming as usual, but I like movies such as this with character evolvement.

Not very deep, not a profound plot, but a good rental with the girlfriend one Saturday night. Very entertaining and cute romance.

There are those out there who don't get the paradox, and I'll briefly explain. Clancy wanted Affleck to play Ryan, so he re-wrote this to be a prequel of sorts. He used the underlying Premise of SOAF to go back in time, re-develop the character, and create more adventures. He was limited by the Ryan in the novel SOAF because it is unrealistic to have a director of the CIA to be running around everywhere. Imagine that Hunt, Patriot Games, and C&P danger haven't happened yet.

I was one of the people who thought Affleck was a horrible choice - until I saw this performance. For once in his career, Affleck gets a meaty character and is multi-dimensional. I felt the supporting cast was A+ and the confusion ensuing something like this is real. The Jack Clark character is top notch. I love him in this no-nonsense role.

As far as the movie goes, it has every quality I look for. Character development, plot development, good script, and things that make sense. Too many action movies let you see a 3-2-1 countdown and stop it at 1.2 seconds to build fake suspense. In addition, it had drama, sadness, humor, action, violence, intelligence, special effects - all of which make this terrific.

I find this movie to be the solid building blocks of a new franchise. USA today (2 stars out of 4) said that it took too long to develop and criticized that the director of the CIA was ignoring his cell phone during the football game. I found that the time to develop the characters was WELL worth it. Too many action films today are shoot-em-up and build fake suspense. This suspense was real and kept me on the edge of my seat. I hate action films (like "Don't Say a Word" for instance), where at the end the protagonist has the advantage and doesn't shoot the bad guy because of moral ambiguity. Then, somehow, the bad guy gets a gun and the good guy is "justified" to shoot him. In this film, I LOVED that they hunted the bad guys down like dogs and showed no mercy. This is believable. This gives great satisfaction to a viewer who has just seen literally millions of people killed.

Another facet about the movie that gave this credibility was the fact it didn't try to get credibility. It didn't try to convince the viewers that "millions died" to get an effect. It didn't rattle off all of Affleck's credentials like so many movies do in the first 10 minutes. He wasn't called "Dr. Ryan" until he met the Russian president 50 minutes into it. I loved that he was ambiguous towards commitment with his gf, it shows real fear. However, the blast made him suddenly realize what was important and was a driving factor in his commitment. More movies should try to downplay credentials - you end up giving the character more credit. As a point of reference, I look at Seagal movies. In the first 15 minutes, he had to be some special forces guru who knew everything. Why couldn't he just be an average guy who overachieves like Bruce Willis in Die Hard? Seagal's career is weary at best now because he has an ego with his scripts. Viewers like to relate to over-achievers, and I feel Affleck did a GREAT job playing an average guy who worked hard and is over-achieving and growing in strength as the ante is raised in global war. The fact his character evolves to a stronger Ryan in the movie is great cinema.