‘Masterminds’: High Concept and Ingenuity

“Masterminds” has “teen product” stamped all over its shiny surface. It boasts a 16-year-old hero who looks as if he just came from a Seattle mosh pit. He’s also way cooler and a whole lot smarter than the grown-ups, all of whom, of course, don’t understand him. Power-amped guitar-fills are used to patch the spaces between action sequences. And, as seems to be the case with every movie released this summer, it loves to squeeze your insides with high-concept--and highly implausible--action.

Still, compared with all the other action thrillers made for the 17-year-old in all of us, “Masterminds” delivers its routine suspense with relative restraint and even a little ingenuity. It doesn’t brutalize its characters or its audience with gratuitous, excessive violence.

And even if it is “high concept,” give its makers some credit for being even a little novel. If you were making the pitch, you’d probably call it “ ‘Hardy Boys’ Meets ‘Die Hard.’ ” That is, if Joe or Frank Hardy had some of Bart Simpson’s antisocial tendencies.

Of course, Ozzie Paxton, as played by moody, handsome Vincent Kartheiser (from last year’s late-summer family flick “Alaska”), looks nothing like Bart and doesn’t quite have the Simpson kid’s way with a wisecrack. Nonetheless, he is, like Bart, defiantly underachieving, a cyber whiz who finds little reason at home or school to put his considerable mental prowess to productive use.

Ozzie is in so much trouble at the movie’s start that he’s even willing to deliver his bratty stepsister (Katie Stuart) to the tony private school he used to attend before getting tossed out for terminal attitude. The tough-talking principal (Brenda Fricker) had been so undone by Ozzie’s pranks the previous year that she had hired a suave security specialist (Patrick Stewart) to build an air-tight, high-tech system.

But just when Ozzie’s about to administer a coup de grace to the school, there’s a turn of events that puts Ozzie in an unexpected role. Ozzie finds himself inside the school, having the time of his life with the kind of freewheeling subterranean mischief that would make both Bugs Bunny and Bruce Willis proud.

This is unapologetic wish-fulfillment for teenage outcasts everywhere. Like most fantasies, it stretches credulity like pizza dough. (Mostly, you wonder how it’s possible that, despite the surplus of explosions, electrocutions and other mayhem, no one loses his or her life.)

Still, after watching so many recent movies that persist in showing children in perpetual helplessness, it comes as something of a relief to see a movie where a kid actually takes charge of a situation. There are worse things for movies to do than give kids a sense of autonomy.

And it’s a pleasure to watch “Star Trek’s” Stewart having so much fun being bad. He doesn’t eat the scenery so much as dine on it, and he carries his villainy in a charming, smarmy manner that almost makes you root for him. Or, at least, for he and Ozzie to pool their malcontent imaginations together so they can annoy the slugs who cramp their styles.

*

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for violence included in a children hostage situation, and for language. Times guidelines: mild profanity.

‘Masterminds’

Patrick Stewart: Rafe Bentley

Vincent Kartheiser: Ozzie

Brenda Fricker: Principal Maloney

Brad Whitford: Miles Lawrence

Matt Craven: Jake

A Pacific Motion Pictures production, a Byars/Dudelson production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Roger Christian. Producers Robert Dudelson, Floyd Byars. Screenplay by Floyd Byars, based on a story by Floyd Byars & Alex Siskin & Chris Black. Cinematographer Nic Morris. Editor Robin Russell. Costumes Monique Sanchez, Derek J. Baskerville. Music Anthony Marinelli. Production design Douglas Higgins. Art director Doug Byggdin. Set decorator Mark Lane. Running time: 1 hour, 16 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.