MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE*****

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is the action film other action films want to be when they grow up. It brings us glamorous destinations and stunts that are better choreographed and more audacious than a James Bond, Bourne or Fast film.  But most of all, it brings us a depth of relationship dynamic that we just don't get with other films.  The characters care about each other, they riff off of each other, and they have a profound moral sense. This means that amidst the action scenes we get moments of real pathos.  We actually care that the characters survive.  We actually believe in their mission.  

The big bad in this film couldn't be more timely: a sentient AI that has gained access to every major nation's defense and intelligence systems.  Governments are vying to control it and so become the world's next superpower.  By contrast, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his friends and colleagues in the Impossible Mission Force want to stop it. And to do so they need to unite two half of a cruciform key AND figure out what that key unlocks.  This mission will lead them from an attempted theft in Abu Dhabi airport, to a car chase in Rome, a brokered deal in Venice, and an interception aboard the Orient Express.

The stunts are just incredible. The car chase in Rome neatly references THE ITALIAN JOB and gives us the physical comedy of Cruise driving a tiny Fiat. But the money shot is the one that was featured in the extended trailer, showing Cruise motorcycling off a mountain then free gliding onto the Orient Express.  And yes, in a world of CGI, the fact that we see and know that it is Cruise makes all the difference. 

But as I said before, what makes this film fantastic are the layered relationships and call-backs.  I love Vanessa Kirby channelling Vanessa Redgrave from MI1, as Max's daughter and Alanna.  I love having Harry Czerny back as Kitteridge, and how Macquarrie shoots him in a askew angles, just like Brian de Palma in the first film.  As for the much ridiculed MI2 I would argue that Hayley Atwell's Grace is basically Nia Nordorff-Hall redrawn with more spunk.  From MIs 1 to 3 on we get both Simon Pegg's Benji and Ving Rhames's Luther as the IMF's IT experts, with some great banter as to who is the best coder. (Clearly, Luther!)  And from MI5 and 6 we get Rebecca Ferguson's literally kickass former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust. In other words, the gang's back together and we really feel their love for each other: indeed that bond is an integral part of the plot.

It's worth taking a moment to note that the core group of players is one of the most diverse in contemporary action film. Few films are making their crack coders older black men.  Even better, that we rarely see a MI woman in a bikini (unless she's training to hold her breath underwater).  These are all professional competent women. They aren't (with the exception of Nia) damsels in distress. And while Grace is a shit action driver, well, wouldn't we all be? But we have no doubt that she would be a skilled member of IMF in due course.  And let's just highlight the careful writing of the character Paris, played superbly by Pom Klementieff. In a Bond film, she'd be just another crazed evil henchman.  But in this film she's given growth, nuance and dignity.

It's also worth remembering that what Tom Cruise and Christopher Macquarie have achieved is rare: they have pushed forward the action genre while also creating a mournful meditation on the toll secret work takes on personal relationships and the refuge that is found family.  And, if that sounds po-faced, they do this while also making meta-jokes about latex masks and how everyone thinks the IMF is the International Monetary Fund. 

I cannot speak highly enough for the way in which this franchise has developed. MI3 had been my favourite instalment up until now but this just blew me away.  See it now, on the biggest screen with the big sound system you can find. 

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE has a running time of 163 minutes and is rated 12A in the UK and PG-13 in the USA. It is on global release.

EDGE OF TOMORROW

Aliens are invading earth and its military has formed a United Defence Force with one trick up its sleeve, PACIFIC RIM-lite super-soldier suits.  A slick adman called Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is a self-proclaimed coward drafted into a Normandy-style attack on the enemy position. He dies, but is looped back to the start of his deployment and soon realises that he needs to make contact with Emily Blunt's war heroine, Rita. She too went through the time-looping and realised that the Aliens are winning the war by resetting and replaying their attack every time they die.  She and now Cage have somehow hijacked the ability to reset and by doing so can now win the war. She therefore sets about training Cage to be a military hero, shooting him to reset the day so that they can start again. 

I'll go on the record and say that I have deep problems with Tom Cruise and that this kind of CGI heavy action movie is not something I usually connect with, but I really enjoyed EDGE OF TOMORROW. Part of that is to do with seeing Tom Cruise on the back foot for the first half of the movie, playing a cowardly doofus who is literally getting beaten up by a girl.  But the other half is seeing just how cleverly the director Doug Liman (THE BOURNE IDENTITY) handles the time loop story.  Because let's be honest, this concept could've gotten pretty boring pretty early, and actually pretty smug.  Nobody wants to see Tom Cruise lord it over everyone as he cannily predicts just what they're going to do before they do it.  But somehow, Liman keeps everything on track and tense and actually emotionally evolving.  The payoff comes in the final scene, which I won't spoil, but where we'd actually seen emotional growth.  I really enjoyed the journey. 

EDGE OF TOMORROW has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated PG-13.  The movie is on global release.

VALKRYIE - superficial conspiracy procedural

VALKYRIE is a straightforward conspiracy procedural about Claus von Stauffenberg's failed assassination of Hitler and anti-Nazi coup. Given that we all know the bare bones of the story, it's laudable that writer Chris McQuarrie and director Bryan Singer manage to sustain tension. Indeed, when Stauffenberg gets back to Berlin, convinced that Hitler is dead, and starts convincing territories to join his cause, I almost believed that the SS might capitulate to the sheer force of Tom Cruise's personality. In particular, I really like the fact that McQuarrie manages to open up the movie from being about an assassination to the wholesale seizure of power - a far more difficult feat.

Where the movie fails is in its ham-fisted, clumsy dialogue. Lines like, "To understand National Socialism, you must understand Wagner". The movie also has a tendency to slip into kitsch. Note the fetishistic treatment of Stauffenberg's glass eye. Would Stauffenberg really have put his glass eye into a glass of whisky to summon the attention of Fellgiebel?

I was also a bit disappointed that Singer didn't have more ambition. To say that this movie basically succeeds as a B-movie is to admit that Singer hasn't even bothered to make a more psychologically involved film. After all, the key point of this movie is that in a country where decision-makers were too self-interested, weak-willed, callow and drunk on power and ideology to make a stand; a small group of men did. Why them? Yes, Singer and McQuarrie do hint at Stauffenberg's faith as a driver, but what about his sense of obligation as an aristocrat or his political views? This movie raises more questions than it answers.

VALKRYIE is on release in the US. It opens on January 22nd in Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea and the UK. It opens on January 28th in Belgium, France, Russia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. It opens on February 12th in Egypt, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Singapore, Brazil, Estonia and Poland. It opens on February 20th in Denmark; February 27th in Italy; March 12th in Croatia; and March 20th in Japan.

TROPIC THUNDER - worth seeing for the odd moment of genius

There are many problems with Ben Stiller’s new Hollywood spoof, TROPIC THUNDER. It’s over-long, too many of the jokes fall flat, and many of the main characters are under-written or just plain redundant. That said, TROPIC THUNDER does contain a handful of genuinely hilarious scenes that are, on balance, worth the price of admission.

The movie features three recognisable types of Hollywood actor – the action hero Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller); the gross-out comedy star Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black); and the method actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Junior). Each actor is insecure. The Sly Stallone-spoof Tugg Speedman is desperate to be seen as a real actor, hence his disastrous attempt to play a mentally disabled kid in an I AM SAM type movie called SIMPLE JACK. The Eddie Murphy-spoof, Jeff Portnoy, is upset that he’s only famous for farting on-screen, and consoles himself with Class A drugs. Finally, the Russell Crowe-spoof, Kirk Lazarus, goes so far into his method-acting that he can barely remember who he is any more.

The movie opens with all three actors filming a war movie in Vietnam that’s behind schedule thanks to their tantrums. Under pressure rookie director (Steve Coogan) takes them on a Werner Herzog style journey into the jungle, where they will face real fear and thus give good performances. Problem is, the gun-fire is real, as the actors stumble into the territory of drug war-lord.

The aim of the film is to poke fun at Hollywood actors, producers and agents, with their big egos and insecurities. In addition, the movie spoofs the shameless avarice that creates life-less franchises and paint-by-numbers genre movies as star-vehicles. Most famously, the movie spoofs actors who try to win awards by doing something apparently earnest and issues-based – such as method-acting their way to Oscar by playing a mentally disabled person or an ethnic minority character. This is all good stuff, and I profoundly disagree with anyone who thinks that the movie is being racist by having a character wear black-face, or that the movie is being offensive by having another character play a mentally disabled character.

TROPIC THUNDER succeeds when it proposes an intelligent satire on Hollywood excess. Robert Downey Junior is superb in his nuanced portrayal of a method actor so far under-cover he’s lost himself. The movie also succeeds in its sheer balls-out excess. I defy anyone not to rejoice in Tom Cruise’s cameo as foul-mouthed, angry studio producer, dancing Usher-style and tempting Tugg’s agent (Matthew McConaughey in a brilliant performance). Some of the physical humour also works brilliantly. There’s a scene where a small kid gets tossed off a bridge that’s desperately funny.

TROPIC THUNDER fails miserably when, for the majority of its run-time, it moves down a notch from satire into spoof. Spoof is all well and good, but it’s frightfully thin and one-note. In other words, you can laugh once at Jeff Portnoy needing a fix, or Tugg Speedman being a stupid ass, but you can’t laugh at it again and again for a near 2 hour run-time. In fact, you could’ve lost the Portnoy character altogether. The ancillary characters are also poorly sketched. Poor Danny McBride – so hysterical in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS – is wasted here. Steve Coogan is given no funny lines as the rookie director. Nick Nolte is given nothing to do as the Vietnam vet. And the two characters who act as foils to the three big egos are also given little to do. Jay Baruchel makes the most of his part but poor Brandon T Jackson only exists in the movie as insurance. His character is basically there to diffuse the tension of having Robert Downey Junior dressed in black-face. It’s like the film-makers thought – a lot of African-American people watching this are going to want to slap Downey Junior, so let’s just put an African-American character on screen and have him to do it for them.

TROPIC THUNDER is on release in the US and Russia. It opens later in August in Australia, Iceland, Mexico and Estonia. It opens in September in Argentina, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, the UK, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Norway and Spain. It opens in October in Belgium, France, Venezuela, Singapore and Italy. It opens in November in Egypt.

RISKY BUSINESS - maybe you just had to be there...

A friend of mine read my recent review of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and was shocked that I didn't criticise it for biting so heavily on the early 80s teen classic movie, RISKY BUSINESS. I explained to him that I didn't mention it because I'd never seen it. I may not be in my first flush of youth, but I'm not THAT old! So, mainly to stop him from whining, we wound up watching it. Now, I didn't have a bad time with this movie, but I really didn't get what the big deal was. Maybe it's because I was never a horny frustrated teenage boy? Maybe it's because I didn't watch it as a teenager? Whatever. This movie just didn't do it for me.

The flick was written and directed by Paul Brickman, who seems not to have a done great deal in cinema thereafter. It opens with a very young, and yet not young enough to really pull off the role of a schoolkid, Tom Cruise. He lives in a nice house in a wealthy suburb and his parents want him to go to a good school. He's under pressure and, despite the urging of his best friend, unable to just say "fuck you". Aforementioned friend hires him a hooker and, after a small hiccup, he ends up getting it together with Rebecca de Mornay. As with THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, this then leads to entanglements with a mean pimp/manager (Joe Pantoliano). The hooker realises that the combination of rich, horny boys; hookers; and an empty house could be a money spinner. Tom Cruise goes from geek to Wayfarer-wearing cool dude in a matter of minutes. The dramatic tension, such as it is, lies in discovering whether the kid will get away with it. Will his parents come home to find their house wrecked? Will the Princeton admissions tutor be horrified by this Young Enterpriser's business? And is Lana really his girlfriend, or just using him?

Tom Cruise is charming, the 80s outfits are hysterical, and Paul Brickman gives Rebecca de Mornay some acid one-liners that she delivers with brilliant dead-pan e.g. "Go to school, Joel. Learn something." The movie works as a decent enough, slighly absurd teen comedy. And, after all, wouldn't everyone like to have the balls to say "fuck you!" once in a while? But, like I said, I didn't get the big deal about the movie. It has nothing like the angst or wit of a John Hughes flick.

RISKY BUSINESS was originally released in 1983 and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

London Film Fest Day 6 - LIONS FOR LAMBS

It seems like Hollywood tries to tackle the fall-out from the Global War on Terror in a new film every week. But I didn't think I'd watch two movies in two weeks written by the same man, Matthew Michael Carnahan, and starring the same actress, Meryl Streep. The first one written by Carnahan was the subversive "CSI-Riyadh", THE KINGDOM. He follows this up with the new Robert Redfod drama, LIONS FOR LAMBS. LIONS FOR LAMBS also stars Meryl Streep as a liberal journalist. She morphs into a CIA neo-con in RENDITION, also currently on release. Added to this, Brian de Palma's Iraqi war drama, REDACTED, is also playing at the London Film Festival.

Of the GWOT films on offer, Robert Redford's LIONS FOR LAMBS has the most intelligence and the most honesty. It doesn't sugar-coat anything. There are no easy choices and no happy resolutions. Rather, it gives us a snap-shot of the US political debate through three inter-weaving scenarios.

The first segment is a conversation between Streep's liberal reporter, Janine Roth, and a presidential-aspirant neo-con Senator called Jasper Irving. (As befits the current Hollywood fashion, we know Tom Cruise's character is a Senator because he's wearing a three piece suit.) The scenes between these two actors are absolutely fascinating to watch. Both actors are on top of their game in this film and the dialogue is fascinating. I love that Carnahan doesn't make Irving the sort of imbecile gung-ho right-winger that liberals love to hate. Rather, Irving is a slippery customer, selling his "by any means necessary" theories with charm and wit. Most of all, he's reasonable. He's candid about the regime's mistakes but has a new strategy to "win the war" (and the presidency). Roth is unconvinced of course. She's heard it before, during Vietnam. But she is forced to admit the fourth estate's complicity in the Iraqi war. The question is, will she sell another story?

Even as Irving's giving Roth the exclusive on the new military strategy, it's failing in the field. Two idealistic young soldiers (Michael Pena and Derek Luke) are stranded in the Afghan mountains, under-fire from the Taliban. In flashback we see that they want to war in order to become engaged with the key issues of their day, and to return home college-educated veterans with a good chance of "being heard". I was convinced neither by their acting, nor by the special effetcs of this segment. Most importantly, I was unconvinced that anyone would join a war on such a pretext. The movie just didn't sell it to me at all. Moreover, I'm not sure you even needed this segment. The dilemmas of the film could have been as easily portrayed by the Senator-Journalist segment and the Professor-Student segment.

This final segment features Robert Redford's liberal college professor using the example of the two soldiers (his former students) to persuade a young privileged kid (Andrew Garfield) to stop being cynical about political engagement. The kid represents the person in all of us who wants to just put their head down, make the monthly mortgage payment, and let the corrupt politicians get away with murder just so long as it doesn't touch our lives. The professor is our conscience, which tells us that "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing". This segment is well acted but again the script fails to engage us.

And this is, I think, the whole problem with this film. It feels too dry - too much like we're eavesdropping on a college debate. It reminded me a little of reading Camus' plays, insofar as the characters and narrative are hostages to a philosophical exercise. The problem is that while a movie can instruct us, it will be far more successful in doing so if it engages with us on an emotional level. Otherwise, I can save my money and read the literature on the relevant issues. The power of cinema is, surely, that it can make us empathise with characters and play out our inner-debates? But LIONS FOR LAMBS did not allow me to engage with it. I was demoted to the role of eavesdropper.

LIONS FOR LAMBS played London 2007 and goes on release in Belgium, Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany. Hong Kong, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the USA and the UK on November 9th. It opens in Argentina, France and Hungary later in November and in Italy on December 14th. It opens in Japan on April 19th 2008.

THE GUARDIAN - wishing for Tom Cruise

Director Andrew Davis makes heavy work of this derivative, ponderous action movie. Kevin Costner stars as a legendary coastguard with marital problems. Obliged to take up a post as a trainer, he meets a cocky young student played by Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher is seriously out of his depth in a serious dramatic role, and shocked as I am to admit this, I found myself longing for the Tom Cruise of TOP GUN, or better still the Richard Gere of AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. Actually, I was longing for the emotional depth and brutality of a OFFICER all the way through this formulaic clap-trap. Yes yes, we've seen it all before. Kutcher will change from a narcissistic idiot to a mature, battle-scarred coast-guard. The hard-as-nails local girl will fall for him. And Costner's character will learn to respect Kutcher's character. Ron L Brinkerhoff's script offers nothing new. So, while I admired the technical effects and the ballsiness of the denoument, frankly, after two hours of weak bilge my emotional investment was nil.

THE GUARDIAN went on cinematic release in autumn 2006 and is available on DVD.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III - There's a point at which boldness becomes stupidity

My mate Nik won't see this film because he does not want to enrich Tom Cruise and thence the Church of Scientology. I paraphrase. What he actually said was, "I’m not going to see MI3 on principle. The principle is that Tom Cruise is a cock." While I agree with Nik's sentiment, I have two words for him and all Tom-haters, and those two words are "air conditioning". Yes, summer is here my friends, and when the going gets hot, Bina hits the Odeon.

But enough of that and on with the show. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III is a half-way decent summer blockbuster. Minimal plot, lots of cool stunts, above-average looking-people, great one-liners. Clearly, it is ridiculous. We are in a world where Tom Cruise can pass himself off as Philip Seymour Hoffman just by donning a latex mask! But that kind of bizarre lunacy is why I love this franchise so much. And, yes, Tom Cruise may seem a tad bizarre when you read the press, but to my mind no-one does mindless action better. We get the added bonus of 1980s nostalgia, most obviously in a scene where Tom rides a motorbike up to a plane on a runway, wearing aviator sunglasses at sunset. I could almost hear "Take my breath away" on the ether.

The plot is beside the point, but for tradition's sake, let me lay it out for you. Tom Cruise reprises his role as Ethan Hunt, a secret agent with a US Government Agency called the IMF. He has quit field work for a training role and a chance at a real life and marriage. However, when his protege is kidnapped, he returns to the field to track down the evil arms dealer, Owen Davian, and secure the return of the dangerous new weapon, codename Rabbit's Foot. And here is where the movie really gets into gear, because we are presented with a host of BADASSES, towit Philip Seymour Hoffman as the evil Davian, Laurence Fishburne as Tom/Ethan's boss and Ving Rhames as Tom/Ethan's side-kick Luther Stickell. These guys steal the show, not least when the hillariously out-of-shape Hoffman kicks the shit out of Cruise. Man oh man, all you Tom-Haters should pay-up just for that vicarious thrill.

But as much as I enjoyed the balls-out ridiculousness of this movie, there is a big problem every time it switches from action to romance. The movie jumps the shark about 35 minutes in thanks to the most stupid, cringe-worthy wedding scene since Four Weddings & A Funeral. Thereafter, every time we get Tom Cruise together with his on-screen wife, you feel the need to laugh out loud. In fact, a supposedly emotional reunion triggered the biggest unintended laugh in the theatre apart from the nauseatingly bad trailor for the latest Bond movie. I know that MI3 is not meant to be a high-fallutin' drama, and maybe I am being harsh to mark it down for making me laugh when I should have been feeling all loved up. But this stuff was so bad it really took me out of my happy, popcorn-tastic vibe. Good action flicks don't deviate from the task at hand. Bad ones have pretensions beyond their grasp. So, like Luther Stickell says, whereas some boldness is required with the stunts and visual effects, there is a point when bold manipulation of the genre becomes stupidity. MI3 may not fall over the line, but it comes too close for comfort.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III is on global release.

WAR OF THE WORLDS - the greatest B-movie ever made?

In the wake of the over-blown quagmire that was MUNICH, my friend Nik suggested that Spielberg "stick to dinosaurs". It was a good suggestion - after all, JURASSIC PARK is the last genuine blockbuster movie that Steven Spielberg directed, at least in terms of box office success. However, the purpose of this review is to stake a claim for WAR OF THE WORLDS as one of the greatest B-movies ever made. The opening of the movie is high-class, with some nicely-observed modern family dialogue between divorced parent, Tom Cruise, his moody adolescent son and his precocious daughter, played by Dakota Fanning. And then, without wasting too much time, the aliens start attacking the earth and the whole thing just goes popcorn-tastic. Roads are ripped up, burning trains hurtle through railway stations, airplanes fall out of the sky. It's just a giant disaster movie with all the best bits rolled into one. Of course, this is Spielberg so all the whistles and bangs and explosions work well, especially when they ape scenes from Jurassic Park. (Just compare that scene where the tripod tentacle is sniffing round the basement with the raptors stalking the kids in the kitchen.)

But the great thing is that this movie also has some great dialogue that allows the characters to show "real" emotions. Tom Cruise is not a simple action hero - he is often more freaked out than his kids are and while this is clearly not the kind of iconic performance that he gave in Magnolia, it is leagues above the kind of cock-sure twit he usually plays in action movies. Dakota Fanning does what she does well too - she looks cute, is scared and screams a lot. For some reason the costume designer decided to give her the kitsch on-acid wardrobe of a seventies muppet, but that only adds to the charm. There are even some nicely handled patches of humour. "They came from somewhere else. Like Europe? NO, ROBBIE, NOT LIKE EUROPE." And we get the added bonus of seeing the always slightly creepy Tim Robbins as a loon.

Of course, the film does have its flaws, but even these are rather endearing. As we all know, the movie is based on the famous novel by H.G.Wells, wherein a bunch of super-intelligent aliens attack the earth and start exterminating humans using tripods that were buried underground millenia ago. Back when H.G. was writing I bet that spindly-legged tripods seemed really scary, but now, well, they just don't cut it. I reckon Spielberg would have done better to either redesign or show the devestation caused by the tripods rather than the tripods themselves. In addition, while the ending is true to the novel, and made a new and interesting point about evolution back in the day, to me, a contemporary viewer, it seemed a little bit weak. But you know what, this is WAR OF THE WORLDS, and I think you just have to go with it. Ditto the moment where I thought the movie really jumped the shark - when Cruise starts singing a "lullaby" to his daughter. I mean, it's painfully cheesy, but even here there is a certain charm in Cruise being willing to do something quite that ridiculous outside of Oprah.

WAR OF THE WORLDS is available on DVD.