MASTERMINDS (Tri-Star) Starring: Patrick Stewart, Vincent Kartheiser, Brenda Fricker, Jon Abrahams, Katie Stuart. Screenplay: Floyd Byars. Producers: Floyd Byars and Robert Dudelson. Director: Roger Christian. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, violence) Running Time: 103 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
"We've got a definite DIE HARD situation here," says young Ozzie Paxton (Vincent Kartheiser) early in MASTERMINDS when he is trapped in a private school where terrorists have taken hundreds of rich kids hostage. It's the moment which is supposed to tell the audience that the film-makers are hip to their own derivativeness, that it's pointless to expect more than recycled genre conventions. Maybe the skyscraper is now a school, and maybe the vacationing cop is now a surly teen computer whiz, but the rest will be chapter and verse from the Contemporary Action Film Bible -- "DIE HARD in a prep school." Right?
Well, yes and no. Though MASTERMINDS has plenty of DIE HARD in its DNA -- including a member of the hero's family among the hostages (Ozzie's stepsister Melissa, played by Katie Stuart), a suave villain with an accent (Patrick Stewart) and a hidden agenda for the bad guys -- the reference in the script is actually a clever diversion to distract viewers from all the other antecedents. The prep school in peril premise comes from the 1991 adventure TOY SOLDIERS; Kartheiser's underachieving hacker is a nod to WARGAMES. If you've been watching movies at all over the past twenty years, you've seen MASTERMINDS before. You just haven't seen it all in the same movie.
Of course the primary audience for MASTERMINDS _hasn't_ been watching movies for the past twenty years; in fact, it hasn't been alive for the past twenty years. It's strictly a youth fantasy about a kid who thwarts the plans of criminals -- HOME ALONE with plastic explosives. And it's a fairly satisfying diversion for that audience, as well as one their parents don't need to worry aobut. For all the bullets that fly in MASTERMINDS, not one of them ever hits a human being; plenty of cars and land mines blow up, but they never take a living victim along with them. With the exception of a few tranquilizer darts, a couple of punches and an exaggerated electrocution, the damage is restricted to property. In a sense, it's the way that it's least like DIE HARD which makes MASTERMINDS a solid entertainment for youngsters: you don't need to count dead bodies to keep track of the hero's progress.
It's unlikely that adults will find much worthwhile in MASTERMINDS, unless it's Patrick Stewart's jolly performance as the leader of the terrorists. He shows a great sense for delivering what the film's audience demands, sneering and threatening just enough so that it's worth a big cheer when he allows himself to be humiliated. He also understands that the plot of MASTERMINDS -- which adults will be ahead of by a solid hour -- is about as inventive as your average episode of "Scooby-Doo;" you can practically hear Stewart begging to end the film with "...and I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for that meddling kid." By the time it reaches its big finale involving a dune buggy chase through the storm drains beneath the school, MASTERMINDS has proven itself to be just playful enough to overcome its obviousness...particularly for those too young to remember WAR GAMES, or DIE HARD, or even HOME ALONE.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 re-masterminds: 6.
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