Movie Reviews : ‘Blown Away’: Here a Boom, There a Boom

Babies are often content to be entertained by things that go boom. Adults may require a bit more with their boom--like a story that makes a smidgen of sense, characters that we can connect with, a few good jokes maybe, a few thrills.

“Blown Away” is graced with none of these attributes. It’s a baby-go-boom movie with an attitude. Jeff Bridges plays Jimmy Dove, the star of Boston’s Bomb Squad, who, 20 years before when his name was Liam, fled the Irish Republican Army after sabotaging an explosion that would have killed innocent bystanders. Now the mastermind of that thwarted attack, Tommy Lee Jones’ Ryan Gaerity, has broken out of a Northern Ireland prison and set his sights on dismembering Liam/Jimmy--but not before systematically exploding his Bomb Squad buddies, his violinist wife (Suzy Amis) and her daughter.

It makes sense that a movie with this many explosions would be stylistically over the top. Everyone in it seems pitched for destruction; even a child’s back-yard birthday party is turned into a hyperkinetic frenzy, just to get our juices flowing. The action, and the acting, are so hyperbolic and over-scaled that at times “Blown Away” seems on the verge of becoming an opera--not an opera anybody would want to watch.

There’s so much talent connected with this film--from the cast, which also includes Forest Whitaker and Lloyd Bridges, to director Stephen Hopkins--that its bludgeoning badness is like a sick joke. “Blown Away” is a lesson in how a movie cooked up with sure-fire commercial elements can self-destruct as messily as one of Gaerity’s bombs. The reason it’s so rank is because it exists only to make lucre and kaboom. And although movie audiences seem more than willing to turn terrible movies into hits, the arrant cynicism of “Blown Away” will probably turn off far more people than it turns on.

Besides, there’s a much better film out there right now that manages to do most of what “Blown Away” attempts--”Speed.” That movie isn’t much more than a whiz-bang mechanical job laced with outlandish heroics, but it has an awareness of its own preposterousness that makes it fun to watch, and its heroes are winning--superhuman ordinary people.

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But in “Blown Away,” Jimmy Dove is such a high-tension-wire jitterbug and Gaerity such a Gaelic meanie that they seem to be competing for this year’s Most Implausible Character award. (When he isn’t singing “Pop Goes the Weasel,” Gaerity is grooving to tapes of the Irish rock group U2.)

Bridges and Jones flail about in a purgatory of bad acting, which is particularly upsetting since they’re two of the best actors in the business. They’re probably much worse in these roles than routine actors would be because they’re reaching for something raw. Couldn’t they see how overcooked their roles already were? On the undercooked side, you’ve got one of the screen’s finest actresses, Suzy Amis, loitering in one of those Jimmy-I-Don’t-Even-Know- Who-You-Are-Anymore roles. And then there’s Lloyd Bridges brogueing about like a superannuated leprechaun.

Since Jimmy learned his bomb expertise from Gaerity, we look forward to a game of wits between these two. But the screenwriters, Joe Batteer and John Rice, must think we’ll be bored with all that cat-and-mouse business. As the film lurches along from explosion to explosion, there’s less of the entertaining Should-I-Cut-the- Red-Wire-or-the-White-Wire stuff and more yelling and throttling. The work of a modern-day bomb squad in the era of micro-technology is a terrific movie subject. It deserves more than the firestorms of “Blown Away.”

Here’s something more punishing to contemplate than anything in the movie. What if some malevolent theater owner decides to double-bill “Blown Away” with “Backdraft”?

* MPAA rating: R, for violence and some language. Times guidelines: It includes graphic charred bodies and much explosive mayhem.

‘Blown Away’

Jeff Bridges: Jimmy Dove

Tommy Lee Jones: Ryan Gaerity

Lloyd Bridges: Max O’Bannony

Suzy Amis: Kate

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release of a Trilogy Entertainment Group production. Director Stephen Hopkins. Producers John Watson, Richard Lewis, Pen Densham. Executive producer Lloyd Segal. Screenplay by Joe Batteer, John Rice. Cinematographer Peter Levy. Editor Timothy Wellburn. Costumes Joe I. Tompkins. Music Alan Silvestri. Production design John Graysmark. Set decorator Peg Cummings. Running time: 2 hours, 1 minute.

* In general release throughout Southern California.