Watched: 02/09/2025
Format: Amazon Prime
Viewing: First
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
This whole movie could have been an email.
Dug tells me this movie has a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I have no idea why. It is true the entire Mission: Impossible franchise has been a struggle for me, going back to MI:2. The movies are mostly Cruise running around and not getting his MacGuffin, punctuated with Ving Rhames reiterating the threat, so you don't forget what we're doing here, and Simon Pegg giving objectives for the next action sequence. However, the action sequences go on so long, I completely forget what the objective was by the end. Between the cut-scenes explaining things and the long, overly complicated action bits - it is very, very, very much like watching someone else play a video game.
The cast is impeccable. The globe-trotting locations tremendous. Cruise looks 45 at age 60. Stunts are stunty.
The plot is that an AI has gone rogue - and seems conscious. And devious! It has failed QAT, and apparently the dev team had never seen a Terminator movie. The MacGuffin is a literal key that exists in two pieces that will *possibly* help control the AI. People keep having it and then not-having it. No one wants to just put it somewhere safe. Hayley Atwell* shows up as one of those thieves that exist in movies like this. She's not a spy, she's just big on ripping people off. Vanessa Kirby, the latest addition to the Marvel U in this summer's coming Fantastic Four movie as Sue Storm, appears as The White Widow, just as she has for a couple of these movies. Rebecca Ferguson shows up, and has like two lines, and I struggled to remember why she was important, but I think she's been in several of these. Pom Klementieff shows up as our sexy, silent awesome hitwoman (and it feels like they let her dress herself, which I applaud).
 |
| our future Sue Storm enjoys a good train ride |
Cruise has an old arch-nemesis played by professional handsome-man, Esai Morales. I assumed he was someone I didn't remember from a prior film, but apparently not. I assumed what we see in the movie as a flashback was from one of these, but is not? I don't know. It is supposed to feel impactful, but it feels more like "oh, okay". What it does do is make it clear Cruise's Ethan Hunt is supposed to be roughly his own IRL age. Unfortunately, Morales' villain is character-free and dull as dirt. This is not on Morales, but on the intentional non-specificity of "Gabriel", who is a phantom in the world of flashy espionage. And, like all characters in M:I films, ardently refused any real motivation, background or reason to care.
Some day we need to dissect how Shea Whigham has managed to corner the market on a very specific role: the career bad-ass, who is not as much of a bad-ass as he thinks he is, but doesn't find out until he has to deal with our hero - and will absolutely not listen to reason, refusing to deal with new information as it's presented.
The story, such as it is, is basically them being too afraid to just let the story that's coming in the next installment happen. Yeah, some stuff occurs, but very little happens. Nameless characters run around, they reiterate how scary the AI is. They chase around the key which, when we learn what it's for and why, is just setting us up for stunts in the next movie.
I feel like the story in M:I movies passes by like sand in a sieve, and my brain just cannot stick with it. The threats are a bit abstract, repeated over and over, and require notions like "if you don't get to that place in running distance, the world will end. Euro-goons will try to stop you.". I can handle the nonsense of a Marvel movie, but there I tend to understand the stakes and why I should care - but somehow, here? I can't be bothered.
Yeah, the action sequences are neat, but unless you're Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan or a few others, long action sequences just become tedious as they don't necessarily push the narrative forward (see, also, the wizard fights at the end of too many superhero movies). I *enjoy* the action sequences as stand-alone fun, in their way, but they just seem like something occurring while nothing happens. Wash, rinse, repeat - then we have a big action sequence and the movie ends.
I also was unclear why Hayley Atwell kept running away. People clearly want to murder her, and Tom Cruise keeps trying to protect her.
 |
| but I'm sure whatever you do is correct, Ms. Atwell |
She even gets someone killed because she keeps running away and the movie tries to reframe it as not her fault, but... nope. That's on her.
There's just not much there-there. It's the familiar "the MIF team basically employs magic" stuff, shady dealings when you don't know who to trust, and Tom looking very concerned, indeed. Add in that they had a single story to tell, but split it across two movies, and then made this first movie 155 minutes... holy christ. That's a lot of Tom running. The villain is a computer program and someone with minimal screentime in Gabriel, and that feels like a massive step back from Henry Cavill up in Tom's grill in the last outing. At least we knew Cavill was more than a physical match for Ethan Hunt, and shared his tenacity.
I really liked the car chase sequence. That was my favorite action bit. But it took way too long - based on their own set-up - for the film to decide that maybe the super-genius-robot-brain might mess with them a bit. That should have actually been the opening sequence, IMHO.
By the 7th of these, of which I think I've now seen 5, it's odd how nihilistic this movies are. Who cares if this villain or that villain wins? We keep finding out people in charge are up to no good and Ethan is continually right to go rogue. What if we just let the other bad person take over for a bit? What will the real difference be? How does it change the price of eggs? Who *are* any of these people?
There's something odd about how excited we get that Tom Cruise is trying to out-stunt Buster Keaton, in much the same way we get reports of how many pounds an actor gained or lost to play a role. Does it matter that Cruise literally drove his motorcycle off a mountain? Would I know the difference if it was CG? Am I taken out of the movie thinking about how they actually did this in a way that the film's insurers were okay with it? Yes.
But, if it sounds like I'm tapping out on Mission: Impossible, I just agreed to see the sequel in the theater when it comes out. After all, this is when we should get Hannah Waddingham in a baseball cap.
 |
| coming soon: me showing up for this movie |
The movie isn't dull, exactly. It's just meandering-to-tedious. It could easily have lost an hour and been fine. But I'm also the guy who tapped out on The Hobbit after the first installment because I felt like they'd spread the butter so thing on the toast, you couldn't tell it was there.
I'm pretty sure they pushed back and retitled Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning, and just as I am sure they've retooled the movie with the extra time allotted in post. We'll see if they can give the series a good send-off. I'm not sure I'll really care by the end of the film, but maybe it will be fun.
*we have been very clear about our stance on Atwell around these parts, and you should not expect that to change. We will be adding Ms. Kirby to this roster of players.
No comments:
Post a Comment