Bean as Bond

CAST: Rowan Atkinson,Gillian Anderson,Dominic West,Rosamund Pike

Rating: ***

“With age comes wisdom,” a monk tells Johnny English in this film. And with wisdom comes a script and direction that cleverly weave in Rowan Atkinson’s passing years into a story about a super spy assigned to stop the assassination of the Chinese Premier.

He remains vintage Bean as vintage Bond,but with a nod to his grey top of hair,sometimes that Mr Bean is almost Mr Bond.

It’s a new-world MI7,as its head “Pegasus” (Anderson) underlines as English returns from a six-year hiatus following an embarrassing failure. “Fast cars,guns and chauvinism” are out,she tells him. “Our weapon of choice is dialogue.”

Also in is sponsorship for even the premier secret service,which now goes by the name Toshiba British Intelligence.

When English is chasing one punk,who is trying to run away with a crucial key belonging to a group of assassins called Vortex,he calmly takes the door when the guy jumps over a wall,takes the lift when the latter scales down a building,and swings across on a crane when he jumps from one building to the next. And English wins this round even as he,of course,loses the key.

The deadliest assassin in the film is an old Chinese cleaning lady who hides her chops behind a vaccum cleaner and a mop,equipment that opens for her more doors than one would imagine.

In line with its older,gentler tone,watch out for the scene where English and two other men in the middle of a gunfight in a public toilet halt and turn away to let an old gentleman take a pee.

It’s not just violence that Johnny English gives a bye to. Despite being about a high-tech group of assassins and the Chinese PM,the film keeps the plot uncluttered. The only jargon involves “face reading” and a mind-control drug whose name is complicated enough for English to fumble over.

However,the hands-down winners are the two episodes when English jumps two elderly women at two crucial moments,suspecting both to be the “killer cleaner”. He holds them by the neck,he punches them,he hits them on the head with trays — unapologetically and enthusiastically. Hitting the elderly may be taboo,but remember,English is too old to let that stop him.

And then there is the scene when he sits next to the British PM at a meeting and realises it is one of those chairs that swish up and down with a hand lever. You can well imagine what Mr Bean can do when left alone with such a tool. What you probably can’t is at what crucial high point in the dialogue would he sink to what crucial low.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com