DrTuvok

Another day, another remake...you can at least say this new 'Naked Gun' is funny, but only up to a certain point. The main adjective to describe this movie would be 'self-conscious'. Much like any other attempt at anarchic comedy these days, the plot remains too rational; it's far too reliant on conventional plot turns (buttressed by Schaffer's equally conventional shallow focus, shot-reverse-shot non-blocking). Notably the one sequence where the film rises to the unhinged lunacy of the best ZAZ comedies is the only one to momentarily throw the entire plot out the window for an insane digression. No need to explain further; the scene is so abrupt and memorable that anyone who sees the movie will know what it is.

But the rest of the film seems far too aware of what it is, and where it fits in America's larger culture as a whole. It knows that it's an attempt to save comedy films, but seems unsure of how to do this. The few half-hearted attempts at non-PC jokes immediately get defanged. ("Are you allowed to say that?" Neeson says after a character uses a certain taboo word). Compared to the sometimes legitimately offensive broadsides of the original Naked Gun films it's too set on following real-world rules. And leading off from that, a very obviously Elon Musk-inspired villain is nothing new (Rowan Atkinson's Johnny English 3 did it seven years ago) but why do we need modern-day commentary in a film that's supposed to be a barrage of sheerly absurd nonsense? It drags the whole thing down to earth, and at the very least could have been more subtle. Duck Soup with the Marx brothers is regularly cited as an anti-authoritarian film, but if you actually watch it this theme seems almost unintended. Naked Gun could have succeeded similarly. Having the villain sell electric cars is a little too on the nose.

But overall there is still some fun to be had with this film. Neeson is perfectly cast, using his intense, deadpan demeanor to good comedic effect. I'm not sure what actors alive now would have done better, unless they somehow got Daniel Day-Lewis to do it. Pamela Anderson also deserves credit for being a game foil to Neeson with no wish to distance herself from the absurdity, and the scenes these two actors share are among the film's best. And the whole thing flies by quite briskly, wrapping up in an hour and a half. Will it bring back comedy? Not alone, but it's a good try.

F1 is maybe the best kind of summer blockbuster we are likely to get in this day and age...engineered by the sure hands of veteran producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the man behind most of the biggest, most bombastic, most entertaining American films of the past 40 years; and Joseph Kosinski, the man responsible for some of the slickest action movies ever made. Like all of Kosinski's films, even the regrettable Netflix/Covid thriller Spiderhead, he tells a fairly simple story that nevertheless doesn't lose focus on the human, emotional themes amidst all the pyrotechnics and world-building. What many critics ascribe to his 'cliches' are actually proven story beats which, if told effectively, will hold universal appeal after all the fads and supposedly 'daring' films of today are forgotten. (Nothing ages more horribly than the hip movies).

The core of the story here is about collaboration, showing how the Formula One sport works, as well as (similarly to Nolan's Inception) serving as a metaphor for filmmaking. Brad Pitt and Damson Idris (more perfect casting on Kosinski's part) ground the story in their hotshot rival forced-teammates dynamic. Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon give solid supporting performances. Everyone in the film works together like a well-oiled machine, or maybe like those hyper-coordinated pit stop crews. On a technical level it's quite close to flawless.

Which leads into the absurdly clueless commentary on this film. First off I knew nothing about Formula 1 going into this, so can easily discount all the neurodivergent arguments from racing fans about the length of the pit stops or whatever. Obviously the film had to generate some sort of appeal outside this very niche fanbase, and Brad Pitt's cool detachment manages to prevent the whole thing from becoming a nerd-fest. Online criticism that stupid American filmmakers could never hope to understand such an intricate sport as Formula One laughably ignores the fact that Lewis Hamilton, a champion F1 racer, had a very hands-on role as producer.

When this became apparent the criticism instead metastasized around the script, with many reviews calling the dialogue terrible, even unbearable, with the only high point being the racing scenes. I don't buy that after seeing the film. The script is serviceable. It gets the job done. It's quite humorous at exactly the points it needs to be and knows when to cut back to allow serious moments. It's what you'd expect from a Bruckheimer film. And compared to today's Marvel movies/shows it's like Billy Wilder himself rose from the dead to write it.

There are only a few criticisms I would consider legitimate. The first is that the romantic element really is woefully underdeveloped. Brad Pitt and Kerry Condon's team engineer develop a relationship which ultimately feels transactional: Pitt beds her, then in the end just leaves still chasing his racing high. The cars come first. And the inner romantic in me was left quite disappointed. Meanwhile, though the film's style and themes are still recognizably Kosinski's, I noticed the Bruckheimer touch starting to overwhelm the proceedings. There are far more montages and quick cuts here than in the director's other, more stately films; sometimes it feels like Tony Scott made it. Not much of a complaint, but the movie is about as precisely, scientifically constructed as those race cars.

It's a good thing this is supposed to be the 'final' Mission Impossible film, since if there's anything it proves it's that there's a limited set of things Ethan Hunt can do, and it's already running out of gas. The two greatest scenes in this film, despite just about surpassing anything from any other Mission, (or any other film for that matter), are essentially ramped up replays of two sequences from Rogue Nation: Ethan retrieving something from underwater and Ethan hanging off a plane.

The fact that these sequences are so compelling and breathtaking only highlight my issues with the rest of the film. I found most of the widespread criticism of the first half to be completely valid: it's too talky, the flashbacks to other films are piled on way too thickly, so many bland characters are introduced and given a bizarre amount of screen time, most of the film takes place in shadowy, empty tunnels (where are all the exotic locations, especially for a film this expensive?), the editing jitters through disconnected scenes. One can go on and on like many others have; it's unclear if Cruise and director McQuarrie simply lost the plot, or if it was edited within an inch of its life after filming.

The film picks up where Dead Reckoning left off, with Tom Cruise in possession of a key that can shut down a world-threatening AI. Dead Reckoning was a sometimes convoluted but always jolly affair, with the best car chase in the franchise, a smashing climax on board the Orient Express, and a lovely addition to the cast with Hayley Atwell amidst Buster Keaton/Hitchcock-esque shenanigans. The Final Reckoning, on the other hand, is a somber affair; the humor inherent to these films has been almost completely drained out. The threat of 'The Entity' is intoned and explained over and over, but we never really see how the breakdown of objective reality looks. This should have been immense (especially with a budget like this) but McQuarrie proves that he ultimately lacks the speculative/sci-fi imagination to do anything interesting with it. It's similar to Dead Reckoning's main issue, namely that any philosophical considerations are ignored in favor of Macguffin-chasing. Why isn't the connection made that the Entity is a more effective form of Hunt himself- - -who has always used deception to achieve his ends- - -and why wasn't this used to relate Hunt to the AI or its handler-turned-outcast Gabriel? Why isn't the 'Entity's world' allowed to reflect the sickening relativism and subjectivism that modern culture has been indulging in recent decades? Again, McQuarrie doesn't seem to have the imagination or the guts. The best we get is Tom Cruise kicking an AI cultist while yelling "You...spend...too...much...time...on the...Internet!"

But again, this is a Mission Impossible film: everyone is here for the action, not philosophy. Here it delivers, especially with those two sequences mentioned with the submarine and the biplane, which are basically the only things anyone will remember after this film. The former is very atmospheric and creepy, almost horror movie-esque, and plays out with nearly no dialogue. The latter shows Cruise taking more inspiration from his work with Joseph Kosinski on Top Gun Maverick: wide, sharp angles showing that he is really doing these insane things as the horizon twists around him. It's completely awesome, a franchise best sequence in a franchise worst film. Outside of those we get a few shootouts and some hand to hand fight scenes, but they never really stand out. McQuarrie directs them with the same punchy dynamic that he is able to infuse in the dialogue scenes, so at least things don't become stale and TV-boring, though generic may be another matter.

But sadly other than this the film takes the rest of its cues from TV-style storytelling. The innumerable callbacks, archival footage, and constant quotes about 'everything has led to this'...it feels like the final episode of a TV show. It's the same vapid, tactics as Avengers Endgame or Star Wars Rise of Skywalker. Some of the callbacks work to some degree- - -I liked what they did with Rolf Saxon reprising the hapless CIA analyst from the original film, and the idea of negative actions having inadvertently good consequences could have been a good theme if expanded upon. The reference to Phelps Jr is a nice olive branch to fans of the original show baffled over what de Palma did with the original main character, and it provides some final scenes with a surprising emotional heft I wasn't expecting at that point. On the other hand, bringing back the JJ Abrams McGuffin 'Rabbit's Foot' serves little real purpose. The constant flashbacks are even more pointless, only bloating the runtime. Someone should have told McQuarrie that fans of this series have actually seen the other movies. That would have made this one better.