Mission Impossible - Fallout

A Running Cruise

Mission Impossible - Fallout
2018 USA Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
UK cinema release print.

So here we go again. The sixth entry into the big budget, big screen versions of the popular Mission Impossible TV show is with us and, once again, the trailer managed to drag me in using the cunning ruse of a running Cruise doing lots of action stuff against a coolish sounding score. Which always works on me, to be honest.

For a few years now, I have observed that each one of these films released always seems to be even better than the previous movie in the series and this culminated in my favourite of these fizzy, spy action confections from the Mission Impossible team, Rogue Nation. I have to say that, while Mission Impossible Fallout carries on the same story, set a couple of years later, this one doesn’t actually get nearly as good as that previous installment. Although it’s still a pretty cool movie and certainly as good as the third and maybe fourth movies. Nothing to rival that wonderfully spy-hard cool opera house sequence in Rogue Nation though, alas.

The plot set up is that, with the captured Solomon Lane (played once again by Sean Harris) in the hands of various governments, the remnants of his terrorist group The Syndicate, calling themselves The Disciples, are being held together by a mystery man known only as John Lark. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt whose mission, should he choose to accept it, is to get back a load of stolen plutonium from The Disciples and, presumably, find out who John Lark is and shut The Disciples down before they blow various countries up etc and destabilise the world as we know it.

So, yeah, business as usual and Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Alec Baldwin from previous films in the franchise are there to help him do it. Unfortunately, Jeremy Renner doesn’t return here as he was busy shooting the sequel to next year’s follow up to Avengers - Infinity War (reviewed here) but instead we have a new character played by the current Man Of Steel himself, Henry Cavill. Of course, Cavill is no stranger to the spy game as he played an interesting variant of Napoleon Solo in the recent The Man From U.N.C.L.E movie (reviewed here) and, sure enough, he does a pretty good job here as the ‘blunt hammer’ of a character he is initially introduced as. Also back in the mix, we have the very welcome return of Rebecca Ferguson as the double agent Ilsa Faust from the last movie and an interesting turn from actress Vanessa Kirby playing a character called White Widow. There’s also another, very special returning character... but I’ll get to her in a minute.

So the film is full of the usual action sequences and I was absolutely horrified as to how much of the stunts Cruise gets to do here. Sure, we all know the story of how he injured his ankle jumping between two buildings and, yes, you can totally see that shot in the final cut and feel the pain of the star as he does things to his ankle that  he’s not supposed to. What really worried me, though, is that he’s also flying helicopters quite dangerously by himself, riding motorbikes against traffic and even performing a free fall rescue operation and halo jump (for which he trained for about a year) and, wow, I’m so amazed this guy is a) able to get insured on set/location in any country other than Hong Kong and b) hasn’t accidentally killed himself making one of these things yet. This guy is certainly dedicated to his craft, though, so despite heavy qualms about his personal beliefs off of the set, you have to give this guy a lot of respect for these kinds of shenanigans. Not to mention he’s also a pretty great actor with a very likeable on-screen presence (and I know from a first hand story on a bus ride from one of his old costumers that he’s a pretty nice guy to be around on set with too).

The film is a blast if you like stunts and action sequences as they are all done with the usual slick, professionalism that this kind of high profile Hollywood blockbuster usually achieves but my biggest problem is that... okay, it’s good but there are absolutely no real surprises in it. There’s a so called twist in this and there are also a fair few scenes set up to fool the opposition and, for effect, the audience at the same time but, honestly, if you’ve seen just a few of these films then you’ll see all this stuff coming a mile off... not to mention the ‘not so well hidden’ true identity of John Lark. That one’s kinda obvious. So the lack of ‘I never saw that coming’ really does bring the film down a level, I think.

That being said, it’s still a blast and it also sees the return of Michelle Monaghan in a quite respectfully highlighted role in the last big section of the film, reprising her character from the third and fourth films and finally tying up that ‘big loose thread’ from the third one which people like me have been so worried about since that installment. Things seem definitely finished up with that character and Ethan Hunt in this one but they don’t do this in the obvious way and it’s not what you’re thinking... perhaps the only half surprise in the movie is the restraint by the writer/director not to do the obvious thing with her character... which is kinda nice.

And of course we have the all important score by a composer I quite like this time around, Lorne Balfe. Now, as much as I would have preferred the director retained the services of composer Joe Kraemer, as his score for Rogue Nation was possibly the best of the big screen franchise scores, Lorne Balfe does an excellent job here, as I knew he would. I really have to listen to the CD when it comes out (with extra music not on the stupid electronic release I’m told... Woohoo!) to get a more accurate impression from the score as it gets covered up by various explosive actiony noises here but from what I can hear of it, it’s not too shabby. He didn’t, from what I could make out, use Lalo Schifrin’s classic title melody as much as some of his predecessors (although The Syndicate theme also seems to be back here too) but when he does use elements of it he makes them count and I am looking forward to hearing this one away from the movie (I thought his score for the reboot of The Sweeney was superb).

And that’s about all I have to say about this one. If you are a fan of these films then you will already know what to expect and you’ll probably have a good time with this one. If you are more casual in your Mission Impossible viewing habits, however, then I would say you would be doing yourself an injustice if you didn’t watch Rogue Nation before watching Mission Impossible Fallout, to be fair, so you can get a sense of the recent history of the series. Definitely one to watch, though, when you’ve seen the others... should you choose to accept that mission.

Mission Impossible at NUTS4R2
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on one of the titles below to take you to my review.

Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 2
Mission Impossible 3
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation 
Mission Impossible: Fallout

Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation

Mission In Action

Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation
2015 USA
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
UK cinema release print.

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to review this fine movie without using the phrases, “pulse pounding”, “high octane” or “rollercoaster ride” because they’re such clichés, even though these specific phrases are more than true descriptions of a film which delivers on all those counts.

Mission accepted.

So here we are again. Regular readers of this blog will possibly remember that it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I first saw the movie incarnations of the Mission Impossible films. I reviewed them all, right here on this blog, and if it wasn’t for my dad finally talking me around to watching them with him (he loves them) then I wouldn’t be reviewing this one now. As it is, I would have been missing out on something pretty damn special in terms of this being a Hollywood blockbuster which more than exceeds any of my expectations of it and also, to boot, my first Mission Impossible movie seen at the cinema.

Now, it’s really not a film that I was expecting to be that good, in all honesty but, now I’ve looked the movie up on the IMDB, it comes as no real surprise to me because the director of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Christopher McQuarrie, also directed one of my favourite films to star Tom Cruise in recent years, Jack Reacher (reviewed here) and was partially responsible for the screenplay of another, Edge Of Tomorrow (reviewed here). To say he does a good job on this one, seriously, is a big understatement. It’s rare I like big budget summer movies quite this much but this one is so well put together and it’s written in such a way that, right from the second sequence in the movie, you really want Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hawke character, and the rest of the Mission Impossible team for that matter, to sort out the bad guys by whatever means necessary.

The movie starts off with a very big scene which is the main set piece used in the promotional trailer and in some of the movie posters. If, like me, you thought the film was going to gradually lead up to the sequence where we see Tom Cruise hanging from the side of a plane, think again... this sequence is just the pre-credits tease, just whetting the appetite for the real main course. Fortunately, the movie doesn’t just go from action piece to action piece without much attention to the plot... although there are a few “chain sequences” of pulse pou-... errr.... I mean, of fast paced action which will have your heartbeat racing in an enthusiastic celebration of aggressive rhythm, there is also a lot of cool espionage type storyline, well fleshed out characters, loads of old faces in the form of Ethan’s associated played by Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames, plus a  couple of new characters played by Alec Baldwin, as the film’s chief ‘good antagonist’, the villanous Sean Harris and a new female double, triple or possibly even quadruple agent named Ilsa, played stylishly by the amazing Rebecca Ferguson, who seems to be playing the role as if Ingrid Bergman was engaging in athletic fisticuffs before being handed a bunch of firearms to play with. Absolutely amazing.

The film, after the pre-credits sequence and a brilliant opening title design appropriate to the franchise, then gets absolutely brilliant with the traditional “your mission if you choose to accept it” scene... and this is where the movie took me totally by surprise which, regular readers of this column will know, is not an easy thing. It also sets up the leading villain, Sean Harris’ character Soloman Lane as the guy to hate and in this movie, he plays the head of a loosely built organisation know only as The Syndicate, who were apparently a major recurring enemy in the original Mission Impossible TV series.

After the initial set up which sees the Impossible Mission team disbanded and Ethan a fugitive from his own people, it’s up for him and his friends to outwit both Lane and the CIA to try and stop the syndicate, which involves numerous encounters with the beautiful and deadly Ilsa, a typical infiltration caper, a not so subtle or surprising scene where one of the gang gets to wear a mask (why do they put those in still... it’s always so obvious who is posing as who way before the reveal) and tons of action but, it has to be said, well choreographed, beautifully edited and not inappropriate action to the plot... I’m glad to say.

And there are some beautiful moments in the movie, to be sure. A sequence in an opera house where Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg are trying to figure out what’s going on before becoming embroiled in a movie moment not totally unlike the one in either of Hitchcock’s versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much is truly entertaining and nicely handled with some fantastic cinematography taking full advantage of the multiple vertical shapes in the interiors of the locations which are used to isolate and highlight characters within smaller compartments, chopped up from the full width of the frame. It’s really nicely put together and, since it’s such a fast moving and suspenseful sequence, something you really have to take your hat off to... if you happen to be wearing one. There’s a similar nice use of verticals used near the end of the film in a two hander sequence between Ilsa and a villanous henchman known as The Bone Doctor which, in all honesty, reminded me of scene in the cathedral/church in the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia With Love (reviewed here) and, happily, it’s no less satisfying.

There’s also a wonderfully long segment of film where we get the typical Mission Impossible infiltration caper... one which will, if you’re anything like me, have you holding your breath as much as the characters involved in this particular sequence, followed by a high oct-... err... petrol injected car chase and then, furthermore, followed by a spectacular motorcycle chase... all one after the other and punctuated by comical highlights and dialogue revelations in just the right mix that it all works and leaves you breathless when the sequence is done.

Added to this, we have the first Mission Impossible score by composer Joe Kraemer, who also scored the same director’s Jack Reacher. What can I say? Much as I loved all the scores for the franchise by Hollywood giants Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and Michael Giacchino... Kramer’s score, for me, is by far the greatest of the Mission Impossible soundtracks so far and I’m really looking forward to that CD turning up in the post in a few weeks time. He really nails how to both use and then integrate Lalo Schifrin’s famous original TV theme for the show without using it as just a crutch for his own, truly awesome solutions to the scoring on this movie. Now, I have to say, when the film reached Morroco, the composer used a big melody which sounded extremely similar, to these old ears, to a sub theme used in Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Mummy. Now maybe it’s a musical cliché based on a specific quirk of the locale in which this part of the movie is set... I only mention the similarity, nothing more. However, Kramer really knows how to work it into the music and he uses it in a few moments in the movie, most astonishingly in a sequence where the big sweeping melody is suddenly used as the base line to support a different musical solution a little later in the story.... which really blew me away, I can tell you. Can’t wait to listen to it away from the context of its functional use.

And that’s about it, I think. The cast are all absolutely great with Simon Pegg’s character really getting a much more prominent role here and with the always excellent Jeremy Renner seeming, perhaps, a little underused but certainly doing some great supporting work here. Rhames is grand, Ferguson is sublime, Harris and Baldwin are both really on the money and... well I’ve always liked Cruise as an actor. Not necessarily the roles he sometimes chooses but he always does a great job in whatever film he’s in and, as with many other roles, he makes you believe he’s capable of what his character is supposed to be able to do here. Added into this we have some really nice writing, great comic moments and some action sequences that make this a real rolllerco-... err... the movie equivalent of one of those big rides on tracks you see at theme parks... so that’s all good. If you’re a fan of the franchise then you will surely love this latest installment and, if not, it’s a great jumping on point to start off from, although knowing who the regular good guy characters are in this will take away a little of the intrigue of the earlier films if you watch them out of order. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is real good time at the movies, though, and I really would be happy for them to do another one at some point soon. This review will self destruct in five seconds.



Mission Impossible at NUTS4R2
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on one of the titles below to take you to my review.

Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 2
Mission Impossible 3
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation 
Mission Impossible: Fallout

To Rome With Love

Rome, Sweet Rome

To Rome With Love
USA/Italy/Spain 2012
Written & Directed by Woody Allen
Playing at UK cinemas now

Well I’ve been watching this writer/director/performer’s work for most of my life now and I’d have to say that, although I’ve had some bumpy times with a few of his movies over the last couple of decades, this gentleman never fails to make interesting, quirky and quality works of art. Last year’s Midnight In Paris (reviewed here) was an absolutely brilliant film and To Rome With Love is no less an absorbing, and sometimes funny, experience... especially if you’re willing to accept the film on its own terms.

By that I mean it’s Woody being more experimental with his writing again. He’s always had quite strong flashes of surrealism throughout his work, starting with his early stand-up routines and then progressing into plays and films, but lately he seems to be much better about letting these elements of his work, when he chooses to go down this kind of route, creep up more subtly on the viewer and take the audience by stealth. The writing techniques he uses to do this are quite masterful and one wonders why a few more “Hollywood”, or at least “US” directors can’t study this man’s works more and understand how to misdirect the audience with a bit of style... rather than just hit them around the face with a big wet fish of obvious intentions.

I’m trying to write this review fairly spoiler free but there are two kinds of surrealism going on in this movie. One is the quirky dream-like surrealism of films like Play It Again, Sam and Annie Hall, and a similar kind of objective narrative stance from a major character on the actions of the past is visited directly in one of the story threads of To Rome With Love... which are woven in parallel, rather than together, to give the audience a sense of the city (although, I’m not sure a love letter to Rome would be so narrative heavy). The other, more dominant but less easy to detect strand of distinct surrealism is woven into the fabric of the movie itself and is presented in the way the different narrative sections fail to interact with each other.

To explain the first... when Alec Baldwin, who plays a famous architect by the name of John, leaves his friends for the afternoon to explore where he used to live in Rome back in the 80s, he can’t find his old place. But a teenager called Jack, played by Jesse Eisenberg, recognises him as he’s a fan of his work and offers to take him back to his place which is near where the architect used to live. However, as a short period of time passes with these characters and Jack’s girlfriend, it becomes obvious that there’s something else happening here. Because of the way it was written, though, the initial encounter between these two characters, to me at least, was of a completely different nature and it’s set up by the script, beautifully acted of course, to sucker punch you five or ten minutes later.

Other flights of fancy are similar to the Robin Williams character in Deconstructing Harry (a man who suddenly becomes out of focus) and start from similarly absurd premises which are then explored on their own terms. These include Roberto Benigni as an average man who suddenly achieves an instant fame for no apparent reason... and this is obviously a platform to explore both the effects of fame and success on the average man and, also, the effects of the loss of fame in someone’s life. This is, presumably, Woody’s exploration of the real trials of fame which I guess he knows very well, transplanted onto the life of someone who has done nothing to provoke that kind of attention.

Another similarly surreal story thread tells of Woody Allen’s character’s discovery that his daughter’s new fiance’s father has a strong opera voice and Woody’s attempts to market this in the classical music industry. Of course, the ultimate starting point for this thread is that people sound better singing in the shower than they do in real life... however, once Woody’s character realises this, the boundaries of credibility are slowly stretched as we are presented with a full-on solution to this most basic of dilemmas.

As for the second, less noticeable surrealistic device showcased througout the film... Well, for a while there you are expecting all the threads to weave themselves together and culminate in a series of scenes where all the myriad characters connect in some way, but this is not the case. A beautiful lady I was talking to on twitter about the movie the other night (@LauraFigas follow her here) said that the tone of the film seemed uneven to her and there were indeed some instances where my mind was grappling to tie the story strands together in a linear narrative due to expectations of the same. However, I’ve now remembered/realised that the time streams between each of the many intercut stories are inhabiting their own, individual time scales and Allen uses the fact that one story which may be set over a number of hours is being intercut with several stories which transpire over a much greater length of time, to dislocate our engagement with the temporal mechanics of the piece, which in one story inhabits two different points in time simultaneously anyway, and allows the audience to stop trying to decode the stories as one, unifying, single unit... which it certainly isn’t. For me it worked fine and my brain decided to accept that the juxtaposition of certain scenes weren’t making sense, which allowed me to enjoy the absurdity of many of the situations arising in the movie. For the lady I talked to on twitter, this manifested itself in a less satisfying manner but I can see how this movie could maintain a sense of unease within the viewer.

As usual for Mr. Allen’s movies, there’s a strong cast on hand to really make the dialogue and situations sing... including the great modern actress Penelope Cruz (glad her career has survived the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean movie) who has less to do in this movie than she did in, say, Allen’s extraordinary work Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but who certainly has great presence playing a prostitute clothed in red (hey, I’m a red blooded male... so cut me some slack here) and gets some of the best comic lines in the movie.

And also, as you’d expect, the movie is well shot and edited and really rolls along quite quickly, even though this is one of Woody Allen’s longer movies, clocking in at almost 2 hours. The vague experimental nature of the format isn’t something you should let put you off, unless you really are somebody who prefers the closure of several cross-cut stories to be tied up in a neat, little bow. The stories each have their own, individual conclusions and this works for me, at least. My one grumble, if I had to have one, would be that the Penelope Cruz character leaves the story without any warning while all the other characters have their own ending scenes. Then again, her character is the one in the film who has less at stake, so maybe that’s why Allen chose not to leave us with one final scene of her to remember the character by (and at this point I can only hope that Mr. Allen gets hit with some kind of Fellini complex and goes the way of The White Sheik... towards his own Nights Of Cabiria project with Ms. Cruz).

To Rome With Love is another great triumph from everyone’s favourite Brooklyn neurotic... and if you are a fan of this director, you won’t want to miss out on another of his masterworks. Enjoy it for what it is... and on its own terms.