Director: Geoffrey Sax, Ger/ US/UK, PG, 93min
Stars: Alex Pettyfer, Ewan McGregor, Mickey Rourke, Sophie Okonedo

On general release

This well-behaved, nicely groomed picture would like to be the first in a series based on Anthony Horowitz’s novels about Alex Rider (Pettyfer), a 14-year-old schoolboy-cum- secret-agent. It’s an amusing wish-fulfilment premise, and some details are clever — Alex’s Q-like boffin (Stephen Fry) works in Hamleys toy shop and hands out deadly gadgets that seem to be a yo-yo or zit cream. However, to reach its target audience

it has to turn discreet whenever anyone is threatened by a giant jellyfish, or cartoonish when the flamboyantly nasty baddie (Rourke) plans to wipe out a generation of British schoolchildren with a virus spread by his computers.

Pettyfer is a bland, posh hero, but there’s quality support from whizz-o chums such as Bill Nighy and Okonedo as spymasters, Alicia Silverstone as a nanny who is an expert in the discipline of chick-fu, and Robbie Coltrane as the dimwit Prime Minister. The story dashes around Cornwall and London, delivering all the infiltration, capture, escape, torture and dangle-from-a-great-height action the mind can stand. A bit ordinary, but it might stretch to a sequel or two.

KIM NEWMAN