Movie Review: Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Genre: Action Thriller  

Director: J.J. Abrams  
Starring: Tom Cruise, Michelle Monaghan, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup, Maggie Q, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell  
Running Time: 126 minutes  

Synopsis: Impossible Missions Force Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is engaged to Julia (Michelle Monaghan), having retired from field duty and settled into the role of a trainer. But when his former trainee Lindsey (Keri Russell) is captured by elusive international weapons dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Ethan returns to duty with his team to mount a rescue in Berlin. He next attempts to kidnap Davian from a Vatican gala to prevent him from peddling the dangerous "Rabbit's Foot" device, but Ethan's exploits have far-reaching consequences involving IMF Directors Musgrave (Billy Crudup) and Brassel (Laurence Fishburne), with a showdown in Shanghai.

What Works Well: The third installment in the franchise achieves superb polish, director J.J. Abrams finally unlocking the potential of the series. Tight editing, a controlled running time, and a steady stream of highlights deliver perfect measures of suspense (the abduction of Davian from the Vatican), stunts (plentiful, but the high-rise jumps in Shanghai are spectacular), and plain high-intensity action (the bridge ambush). Grit (Lindsey's rescue and aftermath) mixes with romance (Cruise and Monaghan sharing good chemistry). The globe-trotting plot is easy to follow, helped by a cast stacked with quality. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a terrific cold-blooded villain and worthy adversary to Cruise's combination of athleticism and intensity.

What Does Not Work As Well: The "Rabbit's Foot" deserved a better explanation, and the political machinations within the IMF Director ranks are half-baked.

Key Quote:

Lindsey (under fire with Ethan in the middle of a firefight): I'm out. How many rounds you got?

Ethan (checks weapon): Enough.

[rises, fires one shot, and takes out the opponent]

Ethan: Now I'm out.

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Movie Review: Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

Genre: Action Thriller  

Director: John Woo  

Starring: Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton, Ving Rhames, Brendan Gleeson, Anthony Hopkins  

Running Time: 124 minutes  

Synopsis: Impossible Missions Force Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is tasked with locating rogue ex-agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), who has stolen a priceless pharmaceutical product. Ethan teams up with professional thief and Sean's ex-girlfriend Nyah (Thandie Newton). They fall in love before locating Sean in Sydney, where he is arranging to profit from villainy.

What Works Well: A series of set-pieces in search of a purpose, the first sequel is an intentional exercise in excessive style subjugating any attempts at substance. Director John Woo prolongs every action scene towards inflated operatic grandeur, with dramatic slow-motion and hair-in-the-wind close-ups used as punctuation marks to add more for the sake of more. Car chases, motorcycle duels, hand-to-hand combat, and fierce firefights are all elevated to feats of death-defying mythology. 

What Does Not Work As Well: When it's not convoluted, the plot is inane. Both the antagonists and the love interest are of the instantly forgettable plastic variety, not helped by an underpowered supporting cast. The self-deprecating wit and careful but faulty planning hallmarks of the series are notably absent in favour of unnecessarily serious James Bond derivations, and the face mask trick achieves tiresome irrelevance through overuse. 

Key Quote:

Ethan Hunt: We just rolled up a snowball and tossed it into hell. Now lets see what chance it has.

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Movie Review: Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

A thrill-a-minute action movie, Mission: Impossible - Fallout delivers expertly constructed and exhilitaring set-pieces with astounding stunt work, but tilts towards over-the-top extremes.

Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) accepts an assignment to retrieve missing plutonium before it falls into the hands of an anarchist terrorist group led by the mysterious John Lark, who filled the void created when Ethan apprehended mastermind Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).

Working with his support members Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), Ethan finds but loses the plutonium in a botched transaction in Berlin. This failure prompts the CIA's Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) to insist her agent Walker (Henry Cavill) accompany Ethan, over the objections of IMF's Secretary Hunley (Alec Baldwin). 

Using information extracted from a rogue Norwegian nuclear scientist, Ethan's team heads to Paris to disrupt a meeting between Lark and black market dealer White Widow (Vanessa Kirby). After reuniting with MI6's agent Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), Ethan is forced to improvise by adopting a terrorist persona, and learns that Lane's release is part of a maniacal revenge and mass murder plot, with Ethan's ex-wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) in imminent danger.

The sixth installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Fallout is stacked with exactly what the series promises: a succession of hair-raising chases, impossible yet possible stunts, and dazzling oh no! moments. Every plan is well thought-out but nothing ever goes according to plan, on-the-fly innovation is a core ingredient, and every twist is followed by a turn to throw doubt on everything and everyone. And in the hands of star/co-producer Tom Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, quality and confidence ooze from every scene.

But yet signs of flab creep in. At 147 minutes this is a really long haul. Many of the chases should have been more sharply edited, and one or two of the pursuits could have been dispensed with altogether. In a subversion of real-time tension, the final 15 minutes (featuring the de rigeur countdown to the small matter of multiple nuclear bomb explosions) seem to take twice as long to tick by. And the humour starts to creep towards Roger Moore-era Bond shenanigans, sharp wit replaced by eye-rolls.

As for the plot, this is classic MacGuffin territory. The plutonium balls are an excuse for agile hops to snazzy locations in Berlin, Paris and London, ending with a trip to a rustic medical camp in Kashmir. The neck-snapping double and triple-crosses between all the assembled agents border on incomprehensible, but McQuarrie takes care to always explain what is going on and why (whether it makes sense or not), and particularly excels in rational, non-nausea-inducing editing of the chase and hand-to-hand combat scenes.

And Cruise continues to astound by performing all his own stunts, and some are truly jaw-dropping. The breathless motorcycle, car, and foot chases are here augmented by extraordinary fun with helicopters (inside and out), and Cruise earns enormous respect by placing his body on the line for some of the most impressive stunts captured on film.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout succumbs to some excess, but still delivers a blast.



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Movie Review: Striptease (1996)

An adult-oriented comedy thriller, Striptease attempts to mix salaciousness with humour and some action. It falls short on almost all counts.

In Florida, Erin Grant (Demi Moore), formerly an FBI secretary, loses custody of her young daughter Angela (Rumer Willis) to her sleazeball husband Darrell (Robert Patrick). To make the quick money she needs to launch an appeal, Erin accepts a job stripping at the Eager Beaver nightclub, where the sympathetic bouncer Shad (Ving Rhames) looks after the girls.

One night Erin catches the eye of David Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds), a lecherous Congressman. Dilbeck is photographed getting into an embarrassing altercation at the club, setting off a cycle of blackmail that spirals into murder. Lieutenant Al Garcia (Armand Assante) starts snooping around, and Erin finds herself sucked into a world of big money, political corruption and personal danger as she doggedly pursues custody of Angela.

Directed and written by Andrew Bergman, Striptease is most famous for Demi Moore's record $12.5 million salary, and for perhaps being the first movie where an A-list actress aggressively promotes her nudity almost for its own sake. The film is not good, but also not nearly as awful as its reputation.

After the critical failure of 1995's Showgirls, the marketing and tone of Striptease was thrown into disarray, with attempts to focus more on the comedy and human story while somehow still capitalizing on Moore's bareness. The disconnects are evident in the film. The striptease sequences are longer and more numerous than they need to be for any purpose other than cheap titillation. When she is not gyrating, and despite the lack of meaningful character depth, Moore adopts a serious and dramatic mother-on-a-quest stance, which is generally completely at odds with all that is going on around her.

Burt Reynolds as Congressman Dilbeck and Robert Patrick as the lowlife Darrell are on a different wavelength entirely and play their roles with screwball intentions. The result is quite a few funny moments, but also a film that is mainly stuck in a no man's land as eroticism, drama and comedy walk away from each other.

Despite the disharmony, the film delivers several sharp jabs towards the hypocrisy of seedy politicians like Dilbeck, a man who cannot control his libido, gets off on Erin's laundry lint and slathers himself with Vaseline in search of a cheap thrill, but yet stands up and pontificates about family values at election events. And Reynolds is in fine form, infusing the role with a breathtaking level of selfish yet clueless entitlement.

Ironically Striptease is limp when revealing flesh, but sharp when shredding spurious sanctimony.

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Movie Review: Out Of Sight (1998)

A heist movie featuring a romance across criminal lines between a bank robber and U.S. Marshal, Out Of Sight tries to be slick but succeeds only in being mostly wet. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, the action never leaves the realm of the contrived and hydroplanes on accumulations of the absurd.

Serial bank robber Jack Foley (George Clooney) has committed more hold-ups than anyone can remember.  He is non-violent and has never used a gun, and has spent a lot of time in prisons and as much time plotting to escape. With the help of frequent accomplice Buddy (Ving Rhames), Jack busts out of jail, and in the process takes Marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) hostage. A spark immediately ignites between the two, but they part ways as Jack and Buddy hook up with another accomplice, the slow-witted Glenn (Steve Zahn). As Jack and his gang make their way to Detroit where they plan to hold-up the diamond-rich mansion of Ripley (Albert Brooks), Sisco is part of a group of federal agents on their tail, and hardened criminal Maurice Miller (Don Cheadle) leads a rival mob intent on getting to Ripley's mansion first.

Out Of Sight is a film attempting to be cool and real, but not many of the central actions or character behaviours ring true. Foley's unlikely escape from prison; Sisco abandoning all logic to immediately fall for a con man who has abducted her; the police showing up en masse to arrest Foley and Buddy at their hideout hotel, but failing to secure the parkade; and the prolonged climactic robbery sequence, in which the real bad guys (Miller and crew) fall into that typical Hollywood trap, where vicious and calculating criminals become bumbling and incompetent just when it matters most, to the benefit of the attractive stars.

Director Steven Soderbergh attempts to cover up the gaping script holes by unnecessarily forcing the action to jump around the hurdle of convoluted flashbacks, which add little style but plenty of confusion. Other stunts include tiny roles for Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, and Nancy Allen, none of whom are on-screen long enough to meaningfully contribute.

Without a firm grip on any sort of reality, Out Of Sight is left with the chemistry of its two stars as it's only watchable element. Clooney and Lopez do not disappoint, but neither can they save the movie. Clooney, still a couple of years removed from movie superstardom, provides further proof that he is heading in that direction with a world-weary performance that oozes class, while Lopez overcomes her character's lack of common sense and delivers what may be her most engaging screen performance, particularly in the scenes opposite Clooney.

Despite the available star charisma, Out Of Sight is out of ideas and quickly out of mind.

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