Johnny English Reborn
British release poster
Directed by	Oliver Parker
Produced by	Tim Bevan Eric Fellner Chris Clark
Screenplay by	Hamish McColl
Story by	William Davies
Starring	Rowan Atkinson Gillian Anderson Dominic West Rosamund Pike Daniel Kaluuya Richard Schiff
Music by	Ilan Eshkeri
Cinematography	Danny Cohen
Edited by	Guy Bensley
Production company	StudioCanal Relativity Media Working Title Films
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	7 October 2011 (2011-10-07) (United Kingdom) 21 October 2011 (2011-10-21) (United States)
Running time	102 minutes[1]
Country	United States United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$45 million[2]
Box office	$160.1 million[3]

Johnny English Reborn is a 2011 action comedy film directed by Oliver Parker. It is the sequel to Johnny English (2003) and the second instalment in the Johnny English series. The film stars Rowan Atkinson, reprising his role as the title character.^[4]

Like its predecessor, the film parodies traits from the James Bond film series and clichés of the spy genre and marks Atkinson and Tim McInnerny's second collaboration after the series Blackadder.^[5]Johnny English Reborn was met with mixed reviews but has grossed a total of $160 million worldwide.

The film was released in the United Kingdom on 7 October 2011, and topped the country's box office for the next two weekends, before being dethroned by Paranormal Activity 3.^[6][7] It was later released in North America on 21 October 2011. A sequel to the film, Johnny English Strikes Again was released in October 2018.

Plot[edit]

Johnny English has been hiding in Tibet following a botched mission in Mozambique (during which he failed to protect the newly-elected president) when he is summoned by MI7. Under his new boss Pamela Thornton, codename "Pegasus", he is put on a mission to investigate a plot to assassinate the Chinese Premier during scheduled talks with the Prime Minister. He meets fellow agent and old acquaintance Simon Ambrose, MI7's resident quartermaster, Patch Quartermain, and junior agent Colin Tucker, who will be English's new assistant.

In Hong Kong, English finds former CIA agent Titus Fisher, who reveals himself to be a member of Vortex, a group responsible for sabotaging English's Mozambique mission. He reveals Vortex holds a secret weapon that requires three metal keys to unlock, owned by himself and two other former spies. However, when he reveals his key, Fisher is killed by an elderly woman disguised as a cleaner, and another guy steals the key.

English chases the thief across Hong Kong, by means of easy solutions to hazardous routes the thief takes, for example, when the criminal slowly climbs down bamboo scaffolding, English simply uses the lift. However, English is outwitted by another Vortex operative disguised as a flight attendant en route back to London, and is humiliated in a meeting with the Foreign Secretary and Pegasus when he attempts to present the key and the plans. He then mistakes Pegasus' mother to be the assassin disguised as a cleaner and attacks her at Pegasus' daughter's birthday party.

Kate Sumner, MI7's behavioral psychologist, uses hypnosis to help English recall his suppressed memory of the Mozambique incident, revealing another Vortex operative, Russian spy Artem Karlenko, who is masquerading as millionaire Sergei Pudovkin. English and Tucker meet Karlenko at an exclusive golf course outside London. However, mid-game, the cleaner assassin critically injures Karlenko. English and Tucker try to bring him to a nearby hospital via a helicopter, but Karlenko dies upon reaching the hospital. However, he manages to pass his key to them and says the final key is held by a member of MI7 before he dies.

Over dinner, English confides with Ambrose about the mole. Ambrose confides with English that he suspects Quartermain is the traitor. Tucker later confronts Ambrose about him being the mole, but English dismisses Tucker and lets Ambrose go free, giving him Karlenko's key. At a church, English confronts Quartermain, but realises he has been framed as the traitor. He manages to escape from other MI7 agents and hide at Sumner's flat. When reviewing the footage of the Mozambique mission, Sumner realises the assassin has been manipulated by Vortex via a mind control drug known as timoxeline barbebutenol.

Later, Ambrose comes to pick Sumner up, and English realizes Ambrose is the mole after briefly recalling his memory in Mozambique. The cleaner assassin comes to the apartment to kill English, but he manages to escape through a garbage chute and makes for Tucker's apartment. In Tucker's flat, English persuades him to rejoin him to infiltrate Le Bastion, a fortress in the Swiss Alps where the talks are to be held, after apologising for his mistake.

In the fortress, however, English accidentally activates a distress beacon that alerts the guards of the fortress to their presence. Left with no choice, English commands Tucker to knock him out, so that the both of them may go up to the fortress. Having been taken into the fortress, English manages to get out of the body bag and warns Pegasus of the threat, but unknowingly imbibes the drink containing the drug. Ambrose, at the scene, commands English to subdue Pegasus.

Assigning English to be the Prime Minister's bodyguard in place of Pegasus, Ambrose orders him to kill the Chinese Premier using a pistol disguised as lipstick, which was initially designed for Pegasus. However, English tries to resist the drug and prevent himself from shooting the premier. Tucker arrives and interrupts Ambrose's communication feed briefly before Ambrose resets the communication, exposing himself to be the mastermind to the others in the process.

English resists again and shoots Ambrose, who escapes, but the drug enters its lethal stage, and English loses consciousness. Sumner arrives and is able to revive English with a passionate kiss. English then pursues Ambrose down the mountainside and both fight in a cable car. English managed to overpower Ambrose for a while but falls out the carriage.

Ambrose shoots at English, who tries to use his spy umbrella as a bulletproof shield, but is soon revealed to be a rocket launcher when he closes it. The rocket launcher destroys the carriage, killing Ambrose. Later on, Vortex is shut down and English is to have his knighthood reinstated by the Queen. During the ceremony, the cleaner assassin attempts to kill English again while disguised as the Queen, which leads English to attack the real Queen by accident, realising his mistake only when the real killer cleaner is finally caught by the royal guards.

Cast[edit]

• 
  Rowan Atkinson as Johnny English, an accident prone but good hearted MI7 agent.


• 
  Gillian Anderson as Pamela Thornton a.k.a. Pegasus, head of MI7.


• 
  Dominic West as Simon Ambrose, a MI7 agent and colleague of English; later revealed as the main antagonist, as a member of Vortex.


• 
  Rosamund Pike as Kate Sumner, a behavioral psychologist at MI7, and English's love interest.


• 
  Daniel Kaluuya as Colin Tucker, an MI7 agent who becomes English's assistant and sidekick in his mission.


• 
  Richard Schiff as Titus Fisher, an ex CIA operative and member of Vortex.


• 
  Tim McInnerny as Patch Quartermain, MI7's wheelchair user quartermaster.


• 
  Pik-Sen Lim as Killer Cleaner, a Vortex assassin who appears variously as a grey haired cleaning lady, Pegasus' mother, and later still, the Queen.


• 
  Stephen Campbell Moore as the British Prime Minister.


• 
  Burn Gorman as Slater, a MI7 intelligence expert who works with Ambrose and is a member of Vortex.


• 
  Togo Igawa as Ting Wang, English's mentor in Tibet, and MI7 sleeper agent.


• 
  Mark Ivanir as Artem Karlenko, a Russian former double agent and member of Vortex.

Lily Atkinson, the daughter of Rowan Atkinson, made her cameo appearance as the girl that gets her helmet stolen by Johnny English. Ben Miller reprised his role of Angus Bough from the previous film in one scene, but was cut from the final film. He would later reprise his role as Bough in Johnny English Strikes Again.

Production[edit]

Filming for the sequel in London in September 2010

On 28 March 2007, Atkinson confirmed on Richard & Judy that a script for a second film was being worked on. In an interview for Mr. Bean's Holiday, Atkinson also said that there was quite a moderate chance for a sequel. On 8 April 2010, Universal Pictures first announced that they were producing a sequel to Johnny English, seven years following the first film.^[8]

In June 2010, it was announced that Daniel Kaluuya had been added to the cast. In July 2010, Ben Miller, who featured as the sidekick 'Bough' in Johnny English, claimed had not been approached to reprise his role. On 10 July 2010, Deadline Hollywood reported that Gillian Anderson would be playing a MI7 secret agent named Pamela Head.^[9]

Filming began on 11 September 2010, in Central London at Cannon Street, with further production scheduled for the week beginning 13 September 2010, at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire and later in Hawley Woods in Hampshire, Macau and Hong Kong.^[10][11]

Filming took place on The Mall, London in Central London on 25 September 2010. Filming also took place in Kent, along the A299 carriageway and Cliffs End, Ramsgate.^[12] The "Johnny English Theme" song from the original film is used four times in the score. Ben Miller, who played Bough in the previous movie, appeared, but his scenes were cut from the final film.

Car[edit]

The car that Johnny English drives was a Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé with an experimental 9.0 litre V16 engine. There are only a few of these engines in existence, produced during tests for the Phantom Coupé, and they were not used in production models. For the production of the film, Atkinson approached the company and requested that they install one into a car, making the vehicle seen in the film unique.^[13]

Release[edit]

Johnny English Reborn was originally going to be released on 29 July 2011. The film was then pushed back to 16 September 2011, however, it was delayed again; this time to 7 October 2011.

Home media[edit]

Johnny English Reborn was released on DVD and Blu-ray combo pack featuring the first film on 14 February 2012 in the United Kingdom, and on 28 February 2012 in North America.^[14]

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

Johnny English Reborn opened to an estimated $3,833,300 in its first weekend in United States and Canada. In the United Kingdom, it grossed $7,727,025, $2,628,344 in Australia, and $3,391,190 in Germany. After five weeks in release, it grossed $8,305,970 in the United States and Canada and $151,772,616 elsewhere, bringing to a total of $160,078,586.^[15]

Critical response[edit]

Much like its predecessor and successor, the film received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 38% of 90 critics have given the film a positive review, with an rating average of 4.8 out of 10. The website's consensus is "Arguably a marginal improvement on its mostly forgotten predecessor, Johnny English Reborn nonetheless remains mired in broad, tired spy spoofing that wastes Rowan Atkinson's once considerable comedic talent".^[16]

Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 46 based on 20 reviews.^[17]CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade moviegoers gave the film was a "B" on an A+ to F scale.^[18]

On the Australian television programme At the Movies, Margaret Pomeranz rated the film 3 stars and David Stratton rated the film 2 stars (the highest being 5 stars).^[19] Indian film critic Nikhat Kazmi of the Times of India gave the film a positive review praising Atkinson's characteristic flair for comedy once again, giving it a 4 star rating out of 5.^[20]

Accolades[edit]

Sequel[edit]

In May 2017, it was announced that pre production had begun on a third film, which was released in 5 October 2018.^[23]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Johnny English Reborn

• 
  Johnny English Reborn on IMDb


• 
  Johnny English Reborn at Rotten Tomatoes
  


• 
  Johnny English Reborn at British Comedy Guide
  


• Working Title Films