Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning

More Implausible Than Impossible

or

Deciding Not To Accept It

Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning may well be the last of the "Mission: Impossible" movies, the series based on the espionage TV show that featured a crack-team of specialists engaged in "heist-movie" scenarios for the government.* The films had some of the tropes, the "fuse" logo, the late Lalo Schifrin's pulsating, propulsive theme, the clandestine mission briefing (that then self-destructed leaving no trace). But, in the movies it spawned,  the "team aspect" always played second-fiddle to its star and champion, Tom Cruise, who increasingly dominated the films, while his character, Ethan Hunt, still remained a bit of a cypher as a character. Other than doing the hardest stuff, of course.

 

But this latest, maybe last, entry, given the evidence on display, indicates the series is past its self-destruct status. At nearly 3 hours in length, what could have been a lean and mean entry feels bloated with a first act crammed with flash-backs (ill-advised as they'd never connected story-lines before and even dropped connections with past movies at the drop of an un-negotiated contract) and a star who, at 62, is looking a little too doughy—in a Brad Pitt/Jerry O'Connell kind of way—to be romping around doing his own crazy stunts and skittering the world in his signature tin-soldier full-tilt run. 

All the worse, because this one really leans (and leans hard) in to Ethan Hunt being the end-all, be-all "only one" whose destiny it is to save the human race from Mutually Assured Destruction at the hands of an AI "anti-god" called The Entity...which featured in the last one and, it turns out, was the undefinable McGuffin dubbed the "Rabbit's Foot" from Mission: Impossible 3.** As The Church Lady would say "Isn't that convenient"***

At the time it came out, I thought it was a nice joke that the "secret thing that everybody wants" (and spends so much time obsessing over) in M:I 3 was so much vapor-ware in the story-line. Nobody knew what it was or what it could do, but it was important enough that everybody wanted it, whatever it was. Turns out, in reality (or film-reality, anyway), it was merely the plot-line of Colossus:The Forbin Project.

"Oh, yeah, there are other people in the movie..."

And Ethan Hunt turns out to be as mythic a lynch-pin to world affairs as Luke Skywalker or Paul Atreides.

 

It appears original, but it's merely a re-gift, just put in a new wrapper.

They also serve—briefly—watching Tom do the hard stuff...

So, anyway, the mission should you decide to accept (and I didn't) is that after the events of Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part 1, Ethan Hunt was in possession of The Cruciform Key, which would allow him to somehow destroy The Entity which is embedded in the Interwebs and is slowly but surely filling it with misinformation, turning the World Wide Web into a cesspool that has man turning against himself (as if it needed any help!) with the eventual end of taking over the nuclear capabilities of all the world's powers. What it would do then is anybody's guess, but even a digital anti-god would know that anything actually using those weapons would create a nuclear pulse and wouldn't do it any good at all, disabling any electronics throughout the world. If it's aim is murder-suicide then you need some other term than "artificial intelligence". Artificial psychosis", maybe? The Entity sounds like it's related to Monty Python's "Black Knight" ("You're a loony!")

They also serve who sit in boardrooms and clutch pearls...

Anyway, getting the thing to destroy The Entity involves two impossible missions: get to the Russian submarine Sebastopol (scuttled in arctic waters in the last movie) to use his Cruciform Key to obtain the Entity's "Podkova module" (containg its source code); then, using a "Poison Pill" developed by IMF whiz Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), get that module to the world's "Doomsday Vault" located in South Africa—a huge mainframe designed to withstand said nuclear pulse even in a planet-wide armageddon—and plug the "Pill" into the "Podkova" thus isolating the Entity and somehow managing to contain the thing.

But, there are complications—there always are—such as the sub Sebastopol starting to roll down a continental shelf when Hunt is inside it (evidently it doesn't have a conning tower or fins or sail planes or...ya know...rudders that might impede the progress), or Hunt having to discard his hi-tech diving suit to get out of a jam and swim...in just trunks...in arctic waters...with no oxygen...and no decompression gear (except on the surface), or—a major one—the bad guy Gabriel (Esai Morales) manages to steal said "Poison Pill" making his escape on a bi-plane (...a bi-plane!), thus forcing Ethan to hijack another one and do a godawful amount of gyrating on wings and struts to get on the bad-guy's plane to get said "Poison Pill."

Now, look...the plot-line is insanely complicated and stupid...way too much so...as well as being openly subject to criticism by what Hitchcock called "The Implausibles" (I can't wait to see the "Goofs" tab on its IMDB page). Such things as Hunt being able to take out two competent goons moments after biting down on a cyanide capsule, or being able to survive "the bends" or the crushing water pressure of a deep-dive while only in his swim-trunks, then being able to do all that dangerous wing-walking the very next day boggles everything that I have left of a mind. The onslaught of implausibles tend to overwhelm such trivial matters as grabbing the barrel of a recently-fired automatic weapon without scorching your hands in the process.

Still, I can appreciate the length and breadths—in IMAX, even!—to which the cast and crew have gone to present such shenanigans. The rolling submarine set that they present is a wonderful little concept design for all sorts of mayhem, and the whole bi-plane sequence is an amazing showcase for what can be done with remote cameras and a star with a death-wish (but one with a goofy absurdist sensibility). As an actor, Tom traditionally dials it to 11, it's in these insane stunts where these proclivities really pay off.

However, the movie is a logical and editorial mess, with sporadic flashbacks that don't quite connect dots or light emotional fuses. It does provide considerable down-time between action set-pieces to make an assault on a snack-bar or sabotage a theater restroom.  

 

If that's your aim I will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck.

*Poof!* hsssssss

Ethan cares, man. He really cares. 

* I'm throwing a lot of stick here, but the TV series, as great as it could be, had elements rolled eyes. For instance: why did every potential, autocratic, generalissimo, and revolutionary look like Martin Landau?

** That was, what, 4 movies ago, the one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which, when you see him in the flashbacks, causes actual grief.

 

*** Yeah, okay, M:I fans, I know that the James Bond series just wrapped up an uncharacteristically continuity-obsessive five-film arc, where everything tied together to the point where Bond super-baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld turned out to be the step-foster-brother (or something) of Bond—in a plot-twist borrowed from (of all things) the "Austin Powers" series. Connecting the dots has a way of diluting the power of a story. In the Craig years, Blofeld wasn't so much an international criminal as a red-headed step-child. Just like in the first Michael Keaton Batman, the criminal who became The Joker was the one to kill Bruce Wayne's parents, rather than just some rando gunman. It waters things down, sometimes to an unpotable degree.

The Wild Robot

"If I Could Talk to the Animals"

or

"What Do You See When You Look at Him?" 

"Crushing Responsibility"

 

Watching movies is always subjective. Your favorite movie may be someone else's bane (I don't plan or participate in "Movie Nights"). And one becomes selective. I'm particularly selective when it comes to animated features—I grew up watching Disney and Looney Tunes (the best!) and the output of Hanna-Barbera (limited animation and derivative plots), but also recognized those elements that were excellent where others left a lot to be desired—the Jay Ward output had really limited animation but the writing was clever and often brilliant). 

I'll hold off watching the Troll movies, or the Sing! movies or anything else that looks like it might push my negative buttons (the one that goes "Eject" for example) because I'm older in years and I'm at the point where I don't want to waste the fleeting hours I have left to me.*

 

So, yeah, I'm picky, as are you. I will not MISS a new Pixar Studios release and SEE it in a theater—I don't care how big your flat-screen is, it can't do justice to Coco—and I will usually see a new Disney feature because the early Pixar brain-trust is involved with those. With everything else, I'm choosy.

The Wild Robot was an easy "go". Based on Peter Brown's children's book, it tells the story of a utility robot, a model of the Rozzum series (this one's #7134 and voiced by Lupita Nyong'o, who is both precise and subtle), who, after a freighter capsizes in a typhoon, is washed up on an uninhabited island, more or less intact, and switched on accidentally by curious otters and proceeds to perform its duties—which is to help, solve a problem, and complete a task. Simple. Like a robot! But a robot in a forest does not compute. It's digital and everything on the island is so...organic! The animal-life is scared of this chrome trespasser and they just want to run and hide, despite the Rozzum's constant inquiries "Do you need...assistance?"

But, if there's anything about the Rozzum, is that it can learn—emulating a crab climbing a cliff saved it from being smashed by a large wave—and so, it sits and goes into "Learning Mode" until it is able to decipher the squeaks and grunts and chirps the animals make and understand it as communication tools, and the first thing they ask is "Are you here to kill us?" "Negative," it replies, but seeing the futility of trying to help these animals, Rozz decides to activate its homing retrieval beacon, but it attacked by the bear, Thorn (Mark Hamill), who breaks it. No retrieval, no "phone home."

Speaking of breaking, Rozzum's initial clumsiness leads to disasters several minor instances and one major familial one. It falls into a nest, destroying the family, with the exception of one egg. As the rest of the family is beyond repair, "Roz" takes the one egg and, seeing as there's a life-form inside, decides to keep it safe—a herculean task as there's a hungry fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), who just happens to be peckish for an omelette. After the two come to a self-beneficial truce, Fink, in his own conniving way, helps Rozzum to understand what it is she is protecting, and once the egg has hatched a gosling—that imprints itself on Roz—instructs Roz on what goslings (and some foxes) can eat.

Now, there's already a lot of story there, and this Wild Robot is made up of a lot of recycled material: the "fish-out-of-water" trope, the Chuck Jones cartoon "8-Ball Bunny" ("Oooo! I'm dyyyyyin'!"), E.T.:the Extra-terrestrial, Wall•E, Noah's Ark—that will come later—and several other bits and pieces snatched from other media and cultures. But, there's another one that it takes a final page from and that's Bambi—like that movie, The Wild Robot acknowledges death and that "nature is red in tooth and claw." There is a pecking order on this little island and the small things get eaten by larger things and there is the risk that a character you might like won't last too long.

This makes the care of the newly-hatched gosling—Rozzum labels it "Brightbill" (played by Boone Storm and Kit Connor, at different stages of development)—that much more imperative. Roz has no idea how to raise a gosling and complete the task, so Fink suggests a neighbor opossum named Pinktail (Catherine O'Hara), who has plenty of off-spring, thank you, for some mothering advice. This comes down to three skill-sets: keeping the gosling fed, teaching it how to swim, and teaching it how to fly before the geese on the island make their winter migration off the island.

Food's not a problem, Fink is good at finding food—especially food that Brightbill can't eat (so, more for Fink) and Roz builds a shelter out of stones to make an enclosure to ensure its charge's safety. Teaching it to swim and teaching it to fly are other matters in terms of complexity. Oh, Roz can pull up facts on buoyancy rates and aerodynamics, but it's not the same. This little runt is going to need some extra-mentoring if it is ever going to leave the nest that Roz has constructed.

All this with the added story-rule that there are predators and there are prey and Brightbill is a tasty little morsel of a nugget. And as one gets to meet other creatures, like Matt Berry's grumpy beaver, Ving Rhames' falcon, or Bill Nighy's old goose, you realize that not every living thing on the island gets along. As someone says in Nature, "kindness is not a survival skill." All Roz wants to do is complete the task, as is its protocol. But, motherhood is just not in the programming.

So, there's a lot of basics familiar from other sources, but, the trick is trying to do it better and make it unique despite the provenance. That is something The Wild Robot does very well, taking the story places that the others hadn't and giving you fresh insights, while also charming the heck out of you. That seems to be the Dreamworks Animation trick—taking familiar things but making them seem bright and shiny again. They do that in the story...and in the artistic side of things, as well.

Where the Pixar pixelators seem to have the goal of making things look as photo-realistic as possible, Dreamworks goes another direction. I noticed it with their Puss-in-Boots: The Last Wish, a push against the reality of things and, instead, making things more impressionistic. It might be that it helps reduce the render-time of complicated images, but one can safely say that the complexity of images isn't sacrificed—there's a scene with a tree that explodes into a kaleidoscope of butterflies that is simply breath-taking to behold. The result, especially in the animation, is to give it a story-telling schmere that only increases the wonderment of what you're watching.

That is some amazing creativity on display, and between that and the directions that the story takes (and despite a jolting action-oriented third act), The Wild Robot is one of those great animation products that deserve to be considered a classic, going beyond its programming to become something very special.

 

It's the easiest "go/no go" decision you could make at the movies this year.

* I just finished reading "Opposable Thumbs," a not-bad book by Matt Singer about the history of "Siskel & Ebert at the Movies" in all its incarnations, and as much as those guys LOVED movies and LOVED reviewing movies, they got to a point where they said "if you think the movie's garbage, get up and leave! Life is too short and too precious to waste."

Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Part 1

"Couldn't You Have Told Me This a Little Bit Sooner?"

or

"Is There Anyone Not Chasing Us?"

 

One can't start out a review of Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning (Part 1) without giving props. It is one busy movie, filled with some amazing stunt work and a dedication to craft that one shakes their head in amazement that these things were thought up and brought to some spectacular life. The immediate reaction to one of these things evokes horror and then giggles as they are pain-stakingly realized to convince you that 1) they actually happened and 2) that they actually COULD happen. And a rueful head-nod must go to "Mr. Gung-Ho" Tom Cruise for putting himself "out there" just because he could. One has to say all this, because for the most part this review will trash this entry in the franchise, surely its weakest entry since Mission: Impossible 2.

 

But, wow, those stunts sure are amazing. The trouble is that's what the movie is all about, the stunts and those alone have never made a good movie. What they show is that the characters have an abnormal survival instinct and the tenacity of pit-bulls to pull though whatever obstacle can be thrown, dropped, propelled and fired at them. And that's it for character development. Oh, there's some ret-conning about "how Ethan Hunt became Ethan Hunt" as well as other agents into the IMF, but it's as unsubstantial as...well, as the entire make-up of the IMF apparently is in the spy hierarchy if we're to believe this movie.

The mission this time (should we decide to accept it, and I, frankly, didn't) is to recover the latest "McGuffin" in the series, the two-part "Cruciform Key", which is used to power up "an active learning defense system" which is touted by its Soviet creators as "the state of the art of war." Timely, since we're all worried about AI (and this is where I insert my "written by human hands" disclosure). The Vicious Thingy was last seen on board the Soviet submarine K699, the Sebastopol, which sits at the bottom of the Bering Sea a victim of its own system's ability to present false data to the sub crew causing them to launch a torpedo attack against a ghost target and blowing themselves up. This is one nasty little AI that can wreak havoc on countries and their defenses, but the world's governments don't want to destroy it, so much as control it. World leaders tend to have a lot of hubris; who wants to bet that they learn a lesson in humility in Part 2?

IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise), despite his"habitual rogue tendencies," is enlisted to find the key. Who has it? Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), late colleague, who is not so late and has one-half of the key. Hunt and the team (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) decide to go after the other half of the key, where they run into an atomic bomb trap (okay) and a pick-pocket named Grace (Hayley Atwell), who manages to lift the other half of the key from the prospective seller, complicating matters. Hunt also runs into a "face from the past" (Esai Morales), who seems to have the ability to not appear on surveillance systems. But, not the ability to make one of those full-head disguises that Ethan depends on in these movies.

What happens next? Chases. Lots of chases. Ethan and Grace are chased by land, foot, wheels, by the CIA, by Morales' "Gabriel"—along with Pom Klementieff's killing machine, Paris—by the forces of arms dealer The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), by his own IMF Chief Kittridge (welcome back to the series, Henry Czerny!) by the local constabulary, and evidently anyone with a cell-phone or police scanner, until everyone meets on the Orient Express, and everything just goes literally right off the rails. Most of this is played with deadly earnestness, but one can't help but chuckle at the "Perils of Pauline" aspect of it, some of it is right out of silent movies.

But, the plot is a clunker. And the dialog at times is so vaguely inconsequential (and delivered so seriously) that you wonder if people are speaking in spy code. So, this entry in the series—the 7th—is overwhelming in stunts and underwhelming in story—and inventiveness—even though everyone bravely battles on.

I had much the same reaction to the very stunty recent Indiana Jones movie, which was only saved by a particularly risky (and fanciful) last act. This doesn't have something like that, but it does have another fight on a train with subsequent derailment, and another smashing car chase in a vehicle not built for those things.

 

The trailer for M:I7 exposed the weakness of the film by just showing stunts and fights, as that seemed to be all it has because, for the first time, they seemed to be borrowing from the James Bond series: the train fight from Octopussy, the Citroen chase from For Your Eyes Only becomes a Fiat 500e chase here, with Cruise and Atwell handcuffed as a similar situation in Tomorrow Never Dies, the whole "world-spy-network-hijack" idea comes from SPECTRE (notice that when the "Mission: Impossible" series borrows from Bond, it doesn't borrow from very good ones?), then that very hyped motorcycle jump has echoes of The Spy Who Loved Me. Usually, it's the Bond films that borrow from other films—maybe M:I is running out of ideas.

There are other odd little issues, like that director McQuarrie (who has done some inspired work in previous film in the series) seems to have shot some dialog scenes using three cameras, that are edited in such a way that, when edited together, seems to have the actors not addressing each other in conversation. It's odd...and a little off-putting. Given the attention to detail in the action sequences, why would something like that occur?

 

Still, despite the reservations I have about the film, I hope it has a great box-office return. The film industry needs a little help right now, and this Summer's expected blockbusters have been under-achieving. A solid box-office return could reverse that trend, and help movie-makers battle the real-world challenges of AI.

Mission: Impossible—Fallout

The Perpetual "Mission" Machine
or
"We'll Burn That Bridge When We Come To It"

The sixth of the Tom Cruise "Mission: Impossible" films has slammed into theaters going 90, and it's getting rapturous reviews. Yeah, it's okay, but it's not the best of the series; the original and Ghost Protocol are the best, and the last one (which was also written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie)—of which this is a direct sequel—was quite good, too. McQuarrie must be scratching his head: "you mean I can have the barest bones of plot, but just make it wall-to-wall stunts, and people will love it more than if I make something really intricate? Who knew?"

Who, indeed? This one subtitled Fallout is cobbled together from elements of the other "Mission: Impossible" movies* as well as recent entries in the James Bond franchise (the first time in a long time that other movies are borrowing from them instead of the other way around), but the main thing it's borrowed from that series is a short-hand story-telling in service as lattice-work connecting the stunt sequences.

It's pretty basic stuff. 

Ethan Hunt is having those horrible foreshadowing nightmares you only get in the movies. They usually involve a Mission gone wrong, killing himself and those he loves in the process. Something goes BOOM! in the distance and they go boom in the shock-wave. Wake up! Time for a special delivery (special because it requires code-phrases). It's a Mission: the capture of Solomon Lane (Sean Harris)—from Rogue Nation—has not ended his menace. He has inspired a cult of terrorists called "The Apostles" who conduct attacks around the world. Led by a mysterious figure named "John Lark," they are attempting to acquire three stolen plutonium cores to be used to build nuclear bombs, designed by an extremist nuclear scientist Nil Debruuk (Kristoffer Joner). Hunt's mission—should he decide to accept it—is to intercept the sale and out-bid for it. As Lane says at one point: "I wonder, did you ever choose not to?"

Now might've been the right time; at the hand-off in Berlin, things don't go as carefully planned—Hunt and fellow IMF-er Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) meet up with the sellers while Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) does reconnaissance in a van some distance away. They're compromised and Hunt chooses to save his team-mates, and in the ensuing firefight, they lose the plutonium. Who has it? 

Turns out it's not The Apostles but some other bad people, led by a "broker" named "The White Widow" (Vanessa Kirby), who is to have a meeting with that "John Lark" in Paris in that most secure of locations, a disco. Given how well he did in the first-go 'round, IMF division head Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) assigns Hunt to track Lark and intercept the meeting, but Hunley is overruled by his boss at the CIA, Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett), who distrusts Hunt to get the job done and assigns him their best "minder," Agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) to keep him in his sights and in line.

Paris being a tough town to get into these days, Walker and Hunt stage a HALO jump (High Altitude-Low Opening) to land on the roof of the disco and infiltrate searching the crowd for Lark. The idea is to find Lark, incapacitate him, make a 3-D mask of his face and let Hunt impersonate him for the meeting with The Widow, but the guy they've tracked as Lark is a little tougher for them to take on—both Walker and Hunt are used as mops in a bathroom brawl, where the three pummel pusses and porcelain, and it is only the intervention of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson, also from Rogue Nation) that keeps him from killing one or both of them. Unfortunately, though, amid her fortunate entrance into a men's room, she's killed the guy. "Could we still make the mask?" she asks. "You need a FACE to make a mask!" Hunt replies. 

So, they do what the IMF always does, they spit-ball—or, in the phrase Hunt uses throughout this one, "I'm working on it"—since no one knows what Lark looks like, Hunt elects to pose as him for the meeting with The White Widow—unfortunately, there are all sorts of assassins looking to take Lark out on sight and since his appearance with The Widow is a dead give-away, he and Walker and The Widow only make it out of the rendezvous by killing a few assailants among the bystanders. Some secret mission.

At the meeting, The Widow gives Hunt and Walker one of the cores and presents the price they must pay for the other two: spring Solomon Lane from captivity, which she has already carefully arranged for them, by creating a viable distraction, while Lane is being transported in Paris. As her thugs are a bunch of murderous sociopaths, Hunt conspires to do them one better with the help of Benji and Luther. They manage to capture Lane with as little collateral damage as possible except for the brick-and-mortar kind. 

But, it makes Walker suspicious: he tells his boss that it is his contention that Hunt is actually Lark, and that it's not just a pose. He thinks he's gone rogue, really, this time: "How many times has Hunt's government betrayed him, disavowed him, cast him aside? How long before a man like that has had enough?" All true, of course. Cruise's Hunt is the most trusted and LEAST trusted spy in the movies. And, not that he didn't understand it before, Walker is told to keep watching him, and if he can prove his suspicions, take Hunt out.

Cue music (Lorne Balfe does a fine job adapting Lalo Schifrin's iconic music, by the way), wind Cruise up and let him go. The remainder of the movie is, basically, chases—motorcycle, cross-country (or city, in this instance, which is London), and culminating in a helicopter chase in the mountainous terrain of India, with the purpose of getting the key widget of a doohickey that will allow his IMF team to stop the two nuclear bombs that are deployed nearby in a remote section of the country—why set them off in India as opposed to more populous cities is anyone's guess.

Cruise doesn't do all of the stunts—some of the motorcycle work is not him—but so much of the dangerous stuff IS him that you can't fail to be impressed...and come to the conclusion that the man is, basically, nuts, and must have one hell of an insurance policy.

He's obviously been watching the Craig Bond's and the "Bourne" films and saying "I could do that"—after spidering around Dubai skyscrapers and clinging to the outside of planes, jungle-gymming under helicopters might have seemed like a bit of a rest—"AND I can keep my face in the camera the whole time." Cruise's self-promotion is legendary, although it didn't help him when he was pin-balling through The Mummy and American Made.

Okey-dokey. Not sure that doing that actually improves the movie, or gets him in good with any stunt-person's union, but sure, big hand for Tom. Way to go, kid. You manage to keep the focus on yourself and make sure the audience is watching you no matter what is going on around you.

They needed to do something because the central mystery of the film—"who is John Lark?"—is easily suspected somewhat early on and confirmed half-way through the film. Not that it matters: as Bassett's Sloan says at one point, "The IMF is Hallowe'en"—it's part of the fabric of the Mission: Impossible series that no one is who they seem to be, by nature or latex disguise, and the gambit has been exhausted in the M:I series. One is hardly surprised by the reveal, because at that point, the film is on auto-pilot.

At this point in the film and the series, Mission: Impossible—Fallout has given up on interesting set-pieces—like the opera sequence in Rogue Nation or the Dubai hotel team-gambit in Ghost Protocol—and deception as its inspiration and just goes for the jugular with the hyper-activity of what has been termed "chaos cinema," that breed of action film begat by The Dark Knight, where you didn't need logic in your story-telling so much as momentum and spectacle. You could also go so far as ignore internal logic in a shot if it produced the desired "buzz" in the audience. Momentum keeps audiences from asking too many questions because the next shock dispels the memory of that question—it's quite effective in presidential politics, too! So, to borrow a phrase from the film, if the other films were scalpels, then this one is a hammer. A blunt instrument to beat out objections. Not too far afield from John Woo's strategy in Mission: Impossible II (and, as I remember, that one stunk).

Look, kids, despite everything that we've been shown the last few years in theaters, "kinetic" does not equal "great." It's one thing to move the camera, it's another thing to move the heart and the mind. And unfortunately, that's one mission that government-run spy agencies always seem to get wrong.

This is from the trailer but does not appear in the film....

* Well, Vanessa Kirby plays a character called "The White Widow" who is actually the daughter of "Max," Vanessa Redgrave's character from the first film, Ethan Hunt has to match wits with another agent as in M-I II, Michelle Monaghan is back as Hunt's...wife... from 3, who was supposedly killed between 3 and 4, but that was just a deception (aw, fergettit) and Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa is back from 5, and Alec Baldwin's back again from 5...and on and on.

Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation

Murphy's Law Enforcement
or
Join the IMF and See the World. On a Screen. From a Closet.

Tom Cruise is nuts.  Let's come right out and say it. He is flat-out bat-shit. In the first ten minutes of Mission:Impossible-Rogue Nation, he does this stunt where he is hanging on the side door of a very large Airbus turbo-prop as it ramps up and takes off from a runway in Belarus.  We watch as the plane taxi's down the runway and then takes off the scenery behind receding in the background.  You can do wonders with computer graphics these days, but the pristene nature of those effects immediately tells your brain "not happening." This, though, is real, because it is rough and less than the ideal that producers* and directors insist on.  Of course, Cruise is harnessed, attached to something with a parachute under his clothes, and the restraints have been CGI'd out, but DAMN! that's really 53 year old Cruise at cruising altitude, photographed by IMAX cameras to reassure you that, yes, that is really him on the edge of the plane. Like the previous film, where he did a short scaling of the tallest building in the world, the sequence is breath-taking, over-the-top, and just plain stupid. The only thing more stupid is the insurance company that underwrote the project, and let the star of the movie do something that ludicrous for real.

I hope they filmed it last, at least.**

M:I-5 (which is what this one is numerically, making it match the name of an actual intelligence agency) sees most of the known M:I operatives—Ethan Hunt (Cruise), Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) endeavoring to keep a "package" from leaving Belarus via said Airbus.  It is your typical Impossible Missions Force strategem (a formula made famous in Bruce Geller's TV-series), with much malice aforethought, gadgetry galore and split-second subterfuge. It's brilliant...until it goes wrong, and it inevitably does. Then the team, so close to the goal, has to punt, improvise, and suck up the bromide mentioned a couple times in the film—"desperate times, desperate measures." Like clinging to a soaring airplane, while your tech-guy is waiting to be in satellite range, so he can auto-remote the Airbus with instructions written in Russian.  It's no wonder a Senate sub-committee meeting in secret opines that "the success rate your unorganized methods garner look suspiciously like chance," and one has to agree.

"Your organization is incompetent, but I want all of you working
for me in the CIA," says Jack Ryan Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin).

For instance, what was the plan going to be if it was successful and didn't need Hunt to jump on the plane so precariously? Were they going to blow up the plane remotely?  Since the plane is carrying nerve gas, "Bye-Bye, Belarus." Were they going to try to fly it remotely? Given they're using Russian satellites to communicate with the plane, and they're having reliability problems, not such a good idea. The problem is there is no plan, other than to somehow get Hunt on the plane in order to perform the stunt, or else...what is he doing in the neighborhood, anyway? It's another instance, post-Nolan "Batman", where a terrific visual trumps story-logic (and to be fair, Skyfall had the same leaps in story-logic—its villain Silva allowed himself to be captured in order for his plan to work? Why didn't he just stay on his island and let somebody else do it?

M:I-5 has a lot in common with Skyfall—a government committee is looking into defunding the head-less organization (the latest leader played by Tom Wilkinson, was killed in Ghost Protocol) and folding its assets into the CIA (headed by Alec Baldwin, who spends most of the movie at least a few steps behind IMF's Ethan Hunt, trying to capture him and disprove that a criminal spy organization called "The Syndicate"*** exists). That "Syndicate" is described as an "anti-IMF" (presumably because everything they do succeeds without a hitch) made up of presumed killed or "disavowed" agents who are working for a spy-mastermind (Sean Harris), who begins this movie by infiltrating one of the IMF's message-centers and hijacking one of the org's notoriously self-destructing mission-statements. As a result, Hunt is captured (is this guy working for the CIA?), and readied for torture to reveal...what, exactly?  Hunt isn't even sure "The Syndicate" exists until they expose themselves by kidnapping him. What can he tell them? How he did the plane stunt?

"I'm not telling..." says Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)

At least, the torture sequence introduces us to Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who works for the Syndicate (but actually—shhhh!—is working undercover for M:I-6—no, not the next movie, the British secret service) and has won the trust of its leader, despite managing always to be there whenever things don't go according to plan). Ilsa is fast, lethal, and lots of fun to watch in fights and, frankly, you care about her more than anybody else in the movie. In fact, she's so good that after freeing himself and aiding in busting up his torturers Hunt can only look at her and go "I don't know you, right?"  Maybe he has her confused with the Emily Blunt character in Edge of Tomorrow.

Hunt goes missing for awhile after escaping, while both "The Syndicate" and the CIA are trying to find him, and he's trying to find the rat-faced head of "The Syndicate." He recruits Benji for help in Vienna where it is suspected that the Chancellor of Austria will be assassinated at the Vienna Opera House during a performance of "Turandot." It's at this point that the movie begins to really take off as writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (he wrote The Usual Suspects and Cruise's Valkyrie, and wrote and directed Jack Reacher) begins to borrow chock-a-block from other movies.  The "Turandot" sequence is straight out of The Man Who Knew Too Much with a couple added twists—there are three assassins prowling the opera house, and Hunt (with Benji monitoring from an electrical room) has to figure who's who...are they going to assassinate the Chancellor, or are they going to assassinate the assassins? In which case...who do you shoot? Talk about triangulation. The drama plays out while Puccini plays below on-stage all the while waiting for that one note where the bullets will fire. Even the gun-men are following the sheet-music waiting for the note circled in red (there's a direct correlative shot to the one Hitchcock devised in The Man Who Knew Too Much gliding over the notes to that one section.

The entire film is not wholly original (is anything, anymore?), but like any assassination film, it's all in the execution, something that McQuarrie does very well. It helps that he has a star who's nutso and so gung-ho that he doesn't have to do a lot of sloppy editing to make a cohesive action sequence. Just pump him up and let him go, and he's like an excited puppy with a chew-toy. And Ferguson if a fine, subtle actress capable of not-so-subtle fight moves who is fun to watch throughout.

So, there's that plane sequence, and the Opera stage-piece (which has a lovely moment when Hunt is nearly run over by a piece of scenery containing one of the marksmen he's looking for, a credit to McQuarrie that he's set the geography enough that you can appreciate it), and a brilliant extended sequence where Hunt has to hold his breath in a submerged tank for 3½ minutes (that is, if everything goes *cough* right) to replace a key programming card to a security system that won't detect Benji as an imposter as he walks into a secure vault—it isn't enough that Hunt could simply drown. He also has to avoid large spinning something-or-others that are supposed to keep either the water or suspense churning. 

This is followed by a car-chase with driver Hunt a little the worse for wear for his underwater stunt, the mayhem caused by his inability to drive, rather than by any skill, and after he and Benji end up skidding along via the roof of the car, it is followed by a motorcycle chase...because it seems to be in Cruise's contract that he has to ride a motorcycle in every single one of his movies. These are inter-cut with little reaction shots, the stunned silence of someone on the other side of the communication device rendered speechless, and occasional set-up shots for pay-offs later in the movie.  All engineered to appear un-engineered.  

Because Tom has to ride one in every...single...movie.

Then, there's a neat little confrontation sequence that feels out of place: the final confrontation in a London outdoor cafe between Hunt, Ilsa, and the bad guy who remains unseen, but who speaks via headphone through Benji, who is wired with explosives. Supposedly this sequence wasn't scripted at the time shooting began; nobody knew how (exactly) the movie was going to end. Oh, they knew how it was going to end-end—with a pair of nicely book-ended call-backs of earlier sequences—but that confrontation sequence has a nicely unpolished feel to it for all involved; where most of the movie feels like it is on well-oiled rails, this sequence feels rough and could go anywhere and wrongly with the next cut. It's surprisingly effective at keeping an audience's complacent doldrums away.

Really, this latest Mission: Impossible is a well-done little actioner, not wholly original, but entirely professional—an entertainment machine that runs on all gears, even slipping a few of them, just for the sheer loopy enjoyment of it, brightened by the full wattage smile (that has only slightly dimmed with a shade of world-weariness) of its Peter Pan-ish star, who seems to have no fear...and no shame. Bravo.

But Tom...Tom, there must be EASIER ways to leave The Church?

Maybe the next one should be called "Mission: Impossible—Death Wish."

* Have you noticed lately that producers are tagging onto their names "p.g.a." (for the Producer's Guild of America).  Is this another ego-grab for the most ego-driven profession in movie-making (like a doctor of Philosophy insisting on having P.h.D. behind his name?) or is this a requirement.  I've only seen it showing up this Summer, even though the PGoA has been around since 1962.  Still think it's odd that an organization that used to fight Unions...has a Union.

** They didn't. According to a New York Times video , director Christopher McQuarrie insists this was the last shot:

*** "The Syndicate" is a throwback to Bond's "S.P.E.C.T.R.E." or UNCLE's "T.H.R.U.S.H" or "Get Smart's" K.A.O.S., and was a part of the original "Mission: Impossible" TV series when the IMF wasn't going after dictators, generalissimo's, and villains who resembled Martin Landau or Leonard Nimoy.