Daniel Graham

Do. Not. Buy. This game is not cricket. The animations are repetitive and after 20 mins you've seen all the possible shots, catches, and fielding. The graphics are flat and belong in games 15 years old. There is no long term playability as you can score huge runs or take 10 wickets from day 1. There are no press conferences, injuries, scandals, TV interviews, sackings, interesting tour experiences, relationships, children, financial contracts, etc that could make the game more immersive, realistic, and engaging. It is not fun.

Not his best but good for a laugh. Seemed a bit unpolished and lazy in places. The best bits are where he gets close to satirising the nonsense of the modern 'woke' brigade (and he splendidly skewers that there are two meanings of woke: the true quest for equality of opportunity and the absurdist post-modern positions like multiple genders or words causing trauma). I just wanted him to drill that area harder because by parodying some of the contradictions and hypocrisy he is no only funniest but also making the cleverest points (the I correct use of 'fascist' and the bad word that's been culturally misappropriated from white folk). It is far more 'offensive' than previous specials, but the offensiveness is deliberate and used to highlight his overarching theme: it's all an act, these are his creations that he's voicing and so only he can truly know if they are offensive in intent. The best of these is where he verbally assaults a fictitious 8 year old in a wheelchair, causing major squirming for the unaware, before revealing that his fictitious target is in fact a bigoted homophobe, racist and misogynist. The point being if you want to get offended on behalf of these characters he creates, you don't know enough about them to take up offence. Likely too clever for some (most?) but then this is Ricky Gervais, not Matt Rife and the depth of the satire is immense.

Ok, firstly there is no issue for me in Michael Jordan as John Clark. Being white was never a major characteristic and he's got the age and physicality of Clark to pull off the role. Five stars. Secondly, I was fine with his SEAL friend being female (some have complained that there are no female SEALs but it's a movie so artistic licence is fine to get a few female characters in - although the movie wouldn't need to shoehorn female characters into the SEALS if it used the excellent female characters from the book. Sandy, Pam, Doris, Sarah Rosen - all excellent in depth characters with great backstory that could be explored in flashbacks). No stars lost so far. But... I love the book, and have been waiting to watch this for years since I heard it was in development. The book is probably Clancy's best (with the possible exception of Executive Orders) and it is almost perfect. The Vietnam War side plot with Zacarias and his torture and interrogation, John's previous tours there and his dread at going back, the brief but powerful love story with Pam and the tragedy that follows, John's recovery and revenge mission and his ruthless surveillance and stalking of the perpetrators of his torment, the drug/prostitute ring and the other girls like Doris and her father, the police case closing in on John, John's second tentative relationship with Sandy and the pain they're both scared of feeling again, and the introductions of Ritter and Greer and the exciting denouement with John and Portagee Oreza. So much good stuff to work with - probably too much for a film. And if they want to insert even more social commentary and political issues, then using Michael Jordan and touching on the political racial issues of the late 60's would allow for that in really interesting ways (Black SEAL risking life to clean up white drug problem and fight to free white pilot while the country itself is pursuing racist policies) while keeping the story tied to the book. But none of this is in the film. All stars lost. This book would have been ideal as an 8 part mini series. There is so much to explore and it could have set up a whole Clark universe with new stories being set in the 80's, 90's and beyond (they could even incorporate some of Clark's missions in the Ryanverse). They could build to the creation of Rainbow around 2001 after September 11th and then spin off that series with Clark and Chavez and their families. 10 years of content, thrown away. So. Much. Potential. I'm not going to cover the actual plot of the movie - it's a generic action movie with regular action movie beats, 3rd act twist you see coming, and modern woke political commentary. It's very familiar and been done much better before (see all Mission Impossible and Bourne films for examples). It's substituted action for story, diversity for character, brevity and brawn for subtlety and guile. A mockery of Without Remorse and any fans of the book should boycott the film and begin the campaign to push Amazon to try again with a miniseries that follows the book. So disappointed.

Fun, family, kind, heartfelt, amusing, and genuine. A warm hug of a TV show.

Great premise fusing ideas from Edge of Tomorrow, Aliens, Starship Troopers, and War of the World's, but fails in delivery on almost every level. Poor acting (apart from the comic relief), terrible sound mixing, poor use of music, poor pacing, terrible dialogue, plot holes for days, on the nose social commentary (we're doomed unless we work together to stop global warming thawing out nasty aliens) and weak and unemotional character relationships and arcs. The worst example is the "bonding" scene between Dan and his daughter where a computer helpfully tells the audience what percentage they are "bonded" until finally they reconcile and their bond is 100% again (using the analogy of the efficacy of their virus). Yey! The only positive is the visual effects which are CGItastic. In the hands of a proper director (Doug Liman? James Cameron?) and with some heavy script rewrites this could be watchable but as it is you'll have more cringe and hair pulling moments than emotional, satisfying payoffs.