Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired from the field agent life, and now teaches the next generation of IMF superspies. He does this for love, for between the last film and now, he has not just apparently dropped a certain thief, never to be mentioned by the movie, but is also now very happily engaged to nurse Julia (Michelle Monaghan), who does know nothing of espionage or his true job.

Because that’s always the way, Ethan is drawn back into field service for a rescue operation of one Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell), his former favourite spy pupil who has gotten herself into a spot of bother. Somehow some quiet observations has resulted in her getting kidnapped by the insane international arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Ethan and his team – this time around Ving Rhames and Maggie Q with a bit of hometown help from Simon Pegg – manage to extract Lindsey, but she dies from an explosive capsule implanted in her head. Ethan’s out for revenge now, and while he’s at it, he might as well also grab a dangerous biological agent in Davian’s possession.

Davian’s not a man to be thwarted or threatened, however, and what’s a better move to make than threaten a superspy’s loved one? Further complications, including yet another traitor in the IMF, do of course ensue.

In Cruise years, we have now reached the point where he had acquired most of the needed acting tools for the kind of star he probably always wanted to be, and has allowed directors to tune down the frequency of shots of him grinning smugly for no good reason. Because we haven’t yet reached the 2010s, trying to come over like more of a human being – if an utterly perfect one who is good at everything, inhumanely hot, and so on, and so forth – is apparently of interest, too. Doing this by giving him a fiancée in one of those jobs Hollywood people would probably describe as “grounded” and “human”, and then threatening her is probably the least original way to go about that, apart from teaming him up with a monkey or a little child, but damn me if J.J. Abrams doesn’t do this efficiently as well as effectively. In part, the trick works as well as it does because Michelle Monaghan is really, really, good at projecting humanity back at unlikable male stars that isn’t actually coming from them, convincing us that something must actually be perfectly alright and decent with those guys. It’s a curious ability, but it works.

At least, this is the only one of the Mission Impossible movies that actually manages to make me root for Ethan instead of just watching the crazy plot contortions and absurd plans, explosions and shoot-outs he’s getting into while raising eyebrows at his boring perfection. So, while humanization by threatened significant other may be a primitive move, it does at least work.

Also livelier than in the movies before is the villain. On paper, Seymour Hoffman doesn’t actually have that much more to do than his predecessors, yet his precise performance and the greater pull of the plot sell him not just as an actual threat but also as a great counterpoint to Hunt, again making a protagonist who isn’t generally likeable more so by contrast.

The action set pieces make as little sense as we’ve grown used to from the series, but make up for that by a general sense of awesomeness and Abrams’s typical ability to shoot loud and obnoxiously conceived scenes as if they were sensible and natural. That he’s actually good with the spy bits of the superspy formula is another point in Mission Impossible III’s favour, leaving this a fine way to while away a few others.

Three Films Make A Post: This movie is so real it makes every other movie in this town look like a movie.

Playing It Cool (2014): Meta genre films are difficult, for you really need to have something interesting to say about a genre if you want to get away with deconstructing it (at least a little) while still staying inside its lines. Otherwise, a film will end up looking embarrassed being part of the genre it is in, satisfying no one, most certainly not an audience going into a genre movie because they actually like the genre it operates in. Which is a bit of problem. In parts, this dreadful fate does strike Justin Reardon’s film. It has its funny moments, its short flashes of interesting insight, but mostly, it really doesn’t seem to want to go for the big tearful emotion, and isn’t really as clever as it thinks it is to make up for that. Adding to the problems is that the film is – like a lot of the more male centric romantic comedies – really not interested in romance so much as in its male lead Chris Evans’s character learning to stop being a complete dickhead, with the supposed partner Michelle Monaghan really not being fleshed out terribly well. Which again doesn’t exactly scream romance to me.

La délicatesse aka Delicacy (2011): In the same genre is this French movie directed by David Foenkinos and Stéphane Foenkinos about Nathalie (Audrey Tautou) losing her husband and much of her joy in life until she rather randomly romances her mildly weird, not terribly pretty (that’s a plot point, though one rather curious in a film from the country that treated Gerard Depardieu as pretty damn hot) colleague Markus (François Damiens). It’s just as genre conscious as Reardon’s film but where the American movie seems a bit embarrassed by the whole thing (and really not terribly interested in being romantic, like a slasher movie without murders), this one steps into clichés, traditions and regular plot beats with wild abandon, discarding the bits it doesn’t like, wallowing in those is does, adding an honest appreciation of the weight of pain, as well as general whimsy, and otherwise trusting in Tautou’s natural awesomeness. Or more precisely, her ability to go through emotions from bereft to confused to adorable (that’s an emotion, right?) with full conviction, changing tracks at the drop of a hat, while actually producing effective chemistry between her and her not exactly obvious romantic partner Damiens.

The Hearse (1980): It’s easier to go from that last film to this horror film starring Trish Van Devere than you’d think, seeing that both concern a female main character coping with loss, badly. Just that Van Devere’s Jane stumbles upon a mix of late 70s/early 80s supernatural horror clichés from ghosts over Satanic conspiracies, to bad love, reincarnation and (sort of) an evil car instead of love. Unfortunately, director George Bowers (or the script, for that matter) never manages to get a grip on the material, turning what should by all rights be at least an entertaining grab bag of horror fun into a tame little film that never amounts to much – not even a decent ending.


It’s too bad, for Van Devere certainly applies herself with conviction, but apart from two, perhaps three creepy scenes, she seems to be the only one involved. Unless you count Joseph Cotten chewing the scenery outrageously (and tone deaf) as an impossibly rude lawyer.

Three Films Make A Post: Seduction. Submission. Murder. Tonight . . . evil goes over the edge

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005): Despite being a friend of the darker kinds of humour, I often find myself nonplussed with comedies when they become too cynical, or rather, when they seem to dislike their own characters so much they can’t seem to find any shared emotional ground with them. Consequently, I have a complicated relationship with Shane Black’s stuff as a writer as well as a director. Here, at the start of the man’s career in the latter role, I find myself rather taken with what he produces. While the characters are certainly not all around loveable, Black doesn’t only wallow in their misfortunes, and his tendency to fourth wall breaking and ironic distance is very controlled and indeed responsible for many of the film’s funniest scenes. It’s also remarkable how good Black here is at scenes that are at once playing with genre conventions in funny ways and actually highly effective expressions of genre.

Add to that charming performances by Robert Downey Jr., Michelle Monaghan and Val Kilmer, and a lovingly absurd mystery plot kinda-sorta based on a Brett Halliday story, and you’ll find me with very uncomplicated feelings towards this particular Shane Black film.

The Big Sick (2017): Staying with comedies for a bit, Michael Showalter’s film based on a script by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon that’s based on their own early relationship, with Nanjiani playing himself and eternal indie romance heroine Zoe Kazan as Emily should by all rights be a mess of a film, or a terrible tear-jerker. As a matter of fact, it is anything but, and rather ends up being a highly successful quirky romantic comedy where that “quirky” isn’t code for “too twee”, a film about the specific problems of the children of immigrants, a sometimes drama about family, and a film that may on paper sound like a bit of an ego trip but that’s very much about people not called Kumail Nanjiani too, showing every character as complex and complicated trying to manoeuvre through the messes of life, love and so on.

It’s a fantastic film. The script is funny and moving and clever and so well plotted it feels completely natural, the acting (with people like Holly Hunter and Anupam Kher giving support) is great, and Showalter’s direction is all brilliant pacing and timing, so much so you might forget it’s there – which is an art to achieve.


The Guard (2011): And while I’m at it, why not finish up on another comedy, this time around John Michael McDonagh’s very Irish homage to buddy cop movies – or is it his answer to 80s action movies as a whole? Anyway, the film’s a showcase for the copious talents of Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle and others, and feels like a bit of an ode to the virtues that might be hidden under very dubious surfaces, with some excursions into actual tragedy (the scenes between Gleeson’s character Gerry Boyle and his dying mother played by Fionnula Flannagan are absolutely heart-breaking; also funny), realpolitik, and the sad fact that in some places, the abrasive, politically un-correct man of dubious morals in little things might just be the only moral guy in big things around.

Three Films Make A Post: Don't believe the rumors about all the dead bodies... They're the people who fainted watching!

Source Code (2011): If you need proof that yes, you can make a mainstream SF film in Hollywood that works as a piece of entertainment as well as a humanist reminder that neither the boring cynicism of the Bruckheimers of this world nor the Spielbergian kitsch school is the be all and end all of filmmaking, Duncan Jones has you covered. While Source Code is quite a bit more Hollywood (in a Frank Capra makes a thriller sort of way) than Jones's wonderful first film Moon, it's the sort of film that moves so well inside the best of Hollywood's parameters that complaining about it would be like complaining about Captain America dressing up in a US flag - rather missing the point of the whole thing.

The point is, obviously, that you can still make a film with a brain and a heart, taking what's good about the conventions of the thriller and the undercover SF film (that is, the SF film mainstream reviewers won't ever call SF because it doesn't include squid in space), and just leaving out everything else.

Death on the Fourposter aka Sexy Party (1964): Jean Josipovici's film (original title Delitto alla specchio) is another one of those Italian movies from the early 60s that tried to bridge the gap between the Italian Gothic films and what was already beginning to become the giallo genre. It's not very successful at it - way too much time is spent on decidedly not sexy sexy-times that will delight hardcore lovers of camp but left me wishing for something to actually happen. Once (after half of the movie is already over) the actual plot starts, the film gets a slightly more exciting, at times even a bit clever, but I don't think a handful of scenes of gothic atmosphere is worth fighting through forty-five minutes of dubious sexiness. As a historical artefact that's nearly a giallo of the "rich bastards in a castle/mansion", the film is mildly interesting, as a movie much less so.

Scream of the Banshee (2011): As if I needed another reminder how crap so-called horror can get (though I have to admit it is pretty horrible), along comes this derivative, badly written stinker whose sole saving grace is that Lance Henriksen is in it for a bit. It's still crap, though.

 

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