When the “Mission: Impossible” franchise began in 1996 the movies were big, prestige spy thrillers, heavy on the intrigue and supported by large action sequences. Then came 2011’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” a popcorn flick built around an eye-popping sequence featuring star Tom Cruise scaling the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, with only a pair of suction gloves and courage coming between him and certain death.
That sequence made audience’s eyeballs dance and changed the focus of the franchise. It also turned Cruise into the Evel Knievel of cinematic risk taking.
Since then, the movies have been driven by the death-defying stunts performed by their star, the seemingly fearless Cruise, rather than the convoluted plots of the first batch of films. In the world of “Mission: Impossible” there is no building is too high for Tom to climb, no chasm too wide for him to jump.
The new film, “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One,” files the actual story down to a nub—”I’m going to need a few more details,” says glamourous international thief Grace (Hayley Atwell), as if commenting on the script. “They tend to get in the way,” replies Benji, nodding his head.—while letting it rip with wild action sequences.
The catalyst for the action is artificial intelligence run amok. Called The Entity, it is an all-powerful machine, “who is everywhere and nowhere” and has no center. “We don’t want to kill it,” says Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), the former director of the Impossible Missions Force, “we want to control it.”
The key to controlling it is, well, a key. Split into two halves, the key only works when made whole. Kittridge’s best chance of intercepting the key is the IMF, a secret group of expert spies made up of Ethan Hunt (Cruise), computer technician Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), field agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and sometimes member Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).
The IMF’s mission, should they choose to accept it, is to retrieve one half of the key from glamourous international thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) before she can sell it to black market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby). The fear is Mitsopolis will pass the key’s combined halves to terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales). “None of our lives can matter more than the mission,” says Stickell.
Cue feats of daring-do and wild action.
“Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning” is the ne plus ultra of modern, big-budget studio filmmaking. Director Christopher McQuarrie manages the breathless, super-sized movies with an expert hand, blending old school action movie filmmaking with real stakes.
Whether it is Cruise flying through the air on a motorcycle or navigating through the streets of Rome in a tiny, but speedy European car or hanging on for dear life as a train car disintegrates around him, the green-screenless action scenes seem to be saying, “Take that Marvel.” The organic stunts, no matter how foolhardy they may be, up the stakes, have real danger to them and set “Dead Reckoning” apart from most action flicks. It is escapism at an eye-watering level.
Tempering the action is some humor and an emphasis on the connections between the characters. Loyalty to the cause has always been paramount in these movies, but the bond between the characters has been tempered, probably because we are near the end of the franchise, by a dose of nostalgia and sentimentality.
Still, this is, first and foremost, an action movie, the characters each have an archetype to fill. Rhames and Pegg are the playful foils, Vanessa Kirby is a deliciously vampy femme fatale and Esai Morales is the kind of baddie who makes grand pronouncements like, “I will disappear like smoke in a hurricane.”
Most notable is the latest lead addition, Grace. She is a slippery character whose motives shift and change with the wind, which makes her interesting. Unlike Isla (Rebecca Ferguson), however, who could handle herself in any situation, Grace is more a damsel in distress, although in the arena of self-preservation, she is a master. She is the kind of character that franchises are built around.
“Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One” isn’t all played at 11. It has peaks and valleys, of course, but the valleys are welcome respite from the sensory overload provided by the spectacle and adrenaline. It is a heckuva mission, satisfying, even if we have to wait a year or more, for the story’s conclusion.
Richard joins the Screenfish Podcast to talk everything “Top Gun: Maverick.”
“In TOP GUN: MAVERICK, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise) lives a life of military obscurity until he’s called back as a teacher and mentor to the next generation of pilots. As the past meets the present, Maverick must overcome his deepest fears and pain while training these youthful rookies what it means to make the ultimate sacrifice. This week, Richard Crouse (host of CTV’s #PopLife and Dave Voigt (In The Seats With-ITSPodcast) step into the danger zone to talk about the magic of Tom Cruise, legacy sequels, and the inevitability of age.”
It’s been thirty-six years, but movie goers can once again ride into the danger zone.
Kind of.
Hotheaded test pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) returns to the screen and sky in the high-flying sequel “Top Gun: Maverick,” which, despite the main character’s feats of daring do, plays it mostly by-the-book.
When we first get reacquainted with Captain Maverick, he’s still the hotshot, risky pilot we remember from the first film. His cocky attitude and bad boy behavior has kept him from being promoted. “I’m where I belong,” he says when asked why he’s not an Admiral after decades of distinguished service. He’s popular with his peers but not with the brass, save for his old friend and guardian angel, Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer in an extended cameo).
“Your reputation precedes you,” says Vice Admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm). “That’s not a compliment.”
Called back to Top Gun, the United States Navy training program where he learned fighter and strike tactics and technique, Maverick is presented with a last chance for glory. “You fly for Top Gun or you don’t ever fly for the Navy again.”
Cyclone is obviously disdainful of the arrogant Maverick, but acknowledges he is the best person to train twelve of the brightest and best recent Top Gun graduates for a dangerous mission to locate and destroy an underground uranium enrichment site.
For Maverick, the job comes with baggage. It places him in the vicinity of on-again, off-again girlfriend Penny (Jennifer Connelly), a new character, referenced in the first film as the daughter of an admiral. Most dramatically, one of his students is Lieutenant Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late best friend, “Goose,” played by Anthony Edwards in the first film. Rooster holds Maverick responsible for his father’s death and is resistant to Maverick’s training. “My dad believed in you,” he says. “I’m not going to make the same mistake.”
Of the twelve recruits, half will make the cut, one will be the leader, if Maverick can teach them the precision and “Don’t think, just do” attitude needed to come home alive.
“Top Gun: Maverick” screenwriters Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie keep the story simple; a splash of romance, a dash of remorse, some shirtless volleyball and a mountain of eye-popping aerial action. It’s a recipe that echoes the events of the first film to the point of déjà vu. Still, as an exercise in nostalgia, complete with callbacks to the original, and an emotional appearance by Kilmer, “Maverick” works because it blends old and new in a crowd-pleasing way. Unlike other recent 1980s and 1990s reboots, it salutes the original in tribute. Loud and proud, it wears its superficiality on its sleeve in an old fashioned, last century style that is unabashed fan service.
But what really sets the new and old films apart is Cruise. He was a movie star then, and he’s a movie star now, but with age, the stakes for his character are higher. Maverick has a lot to prove, regrets to be dealt with and while the actor doesn’t appear to have aged at all, that trademarked Tom Cruise Run can’t be as easy as it once was. Maverick is a still a hotshot, but here the character is tempered by the sins of the past and a real concern for the future. Cruise’s work shaves some of the hypermasculine edges off Maverick to reveal a more human and humane character than the first time around. It centers the movie with some earthbound emotion to counter the sky-high action.
“Top Gun: Maverick” is a sequel that plays it safe with the story, but lets it rip in the blockbuster action sequences, giving the audience the expected need for speed.
Writing a review for “Mission Impossible – Fallout” gave my thesaurus a workout. The film, the sixth instalment in the Tom Cruise franchise, is jammed to the gills with next-level stunts that require an expanded vocabulary to describe. Words like ‘extreme’ or ‘exciting’ or even ‘epic’ (and those are only the ‘e’ words) don’t come close to describing the behemothic action sequences contained within.
Cruise returns as the seemingly invincible action man and IMF (Impossible Mission Force) agent Ethan Hunt. Hunt and his crew, tech wiz Benji (Simon Pegg) and agent Luther (Ving Rhames), are charged with finding and capturing anarchist Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a baddie who was the leader of the Syndicate during the last film, “Rogue Nation.” “Whatever you heard about Lane,” explains Hunt, “if it makes your skin crawl it’s probably true.” Lane is working with the mysterious and murderous John Lark, a man with some extreme ideas about squashing the world order.
As Lark and Lane collect the necessary plutonium to fulfil their plan the CIA begins to have doubts about Hunt’s loyalty. Add to that the return of former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), and some newbies, CIA assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill) and black market arms dealer and lady of mystery White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) and you have lots of characters to fill the space between the stunts. Complicating matters is the fallout from some of Hunt’s previous, well-intentioned missions.
There are a lot of very good-looking people in “Mission Impossible – Fallout.” Handsome fellas and femme fatale‘s, they are all woven into a stylish story of international intrigue and plutonium. Like the others “MI” movies it’s packed with exotic locations—only James Bond has more air travel points than Ethan Hunt—doublespeak and double crosses but the narrative doesn’t matter that much, it’s all in service of the Bunyanesque action.
Choreographed to an inch of Hunts life—Cruise really puts himself out there for this one—the realism of the stunts gives the movie a sense of danger and the Green Screen Department the day off. Monumental, vertigo inducing single sequences take place on land, wheels, water and air. Only the screeching of tires score one eye-peeling chase scene between a motorcycle and a car. Visually it is so visceral director Christopher McQuarrie wisely avoided cluttering the scene with frenetic music. It doesn’t need it.
Of course those looking for a finely crafted John le Carré style story of espionage in “Mission Impossible – Fallout” will be bitterly disappointed. While it does contain huggerymuggery it frequently falls just this side of making sense. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. Even when Hunt isn’t in action the movie is in perpetual motion, but Frederick Forsyth this ain’t. Instead it is an elephantine (although no actual elephants appear) action epic that breaks the blockbuster norm of cutting away to an action sequence every ten minutes or so. It’s made up of three Brobdingnagian set pieces stitched together by words that mostly make sense.
CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.
The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.
The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.
Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.
THE UGLY
Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING
mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
The “war on drugs” is one of the longest battles in American history. In 1971 President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one,” vowing combat against drug producers and dealers.
Forty years and many billions of dollars later the Global Commission on Drug Policy stated, “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”
Last year, writing in the New York Times, Mexican journalist José Luis Pardo Veiras echoed those sentiments. “Drugs continue to stream north to the United States, the great user, and firearms enter Mexico in return, where they kill thousands.”
The fight has been a failure for everyone except Hollywood, which has consistently mined the war on drugs for stories and colourful characters. This weekend Tom Cruise stars in the latest tale from the war on drugs, American Made, the real-life story of Barry Seal, adrenaline junkie and TWA pilot.
The story begins with Seal being hired by the CIA to take reconnaissance photos of Soviet-backed insurgents in South America. His life quickly spirals out of control as he becomes a courier between the CIA and Panamanian CIA informant General Manuel Noriega while also working as a cocaine smuggler for the Medellin Cartel.
Drug cartel stories are tailor made for the movies. Populated by bigger-than-life characters like the wealthiest criminal in history, the so-called “The King of Cocaine,” Pablo Escobar, the stories have it all: glamour, drama, moral ambiguity and the primal clash of good and evil. Here are three films with three very different approaches to the war on drugs.
One critic described Sicario as a “French Connection for the drug-fuelled Mexico-US border war.” Starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin, it’s a drama about an idealistic FBI agent working with an elite task force to stem the flow of drugs between Mexico and the United States. It’s gritty and certainly not a feel-good movie about winning the war on drugs. Instead, it’s a powerful look at a seemingly unwinnable battle and the toll it takes on its soldiers.
Savages is an over-the-top Oliver Stone movie that sees Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch as drug dealers and two thirds of a love triangle with a California cutie played by Blake Lively. Their product, a potent strain of legal medical-grade marijuana, earns the attention of a Mexican Baja drug Cartel boss (Salma Hayek) who’ll do anything to create a “joint” venture, including kidnapping and murder.
Savages, at its black-hearted best, is a preposterous popcorn movie that sees Stone leave behind the restraint of movies like W and World Trade Center and kick into full bore, unhinged Natural Born Killers mode. It’s a wild, down ’n dirty look into the business of drugs and revenge.
Smaller in scale is End of Watch. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña play patrol cops in Los Angeles’s tough South Central neighbourhood. A routine traffic stop turns into something bigger when they confiscate money and guns from a cartel member. “Be careful,” they’re warned by a senior officer, “You just tugged on the tail of a snake that’s going to turn around and bite you.”
These movies and others, like Code of the West and The House I Live In, prove the winners of the war on drugs are filmmakers.
The War on Drugs is one of the longest battles in American history. In 1971 President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one, “ vowing combat against drug producers and dealers. Forty years and many billions of dollars later the Global Commission on Drug Policy stated, “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”
The only winners in the drug wars appear to be filmmakers who have mined a rich vein of stories from the decades long battle.
This weekend Tom Cruise stars in the latest tale from the War on Drugs, “American Made,” the real-life story of Barry Seal, adrenaline junkie and TWA pilot. The story begins in 1978 with Seal mentally on autopilot and looking for thrills. Caught smuggling cigars into the United States, the CIA senses his potential and hires him to take reconnaissance photos of Soviet-backed insurgents in South America.
“The work is covert,” says his recruiter, Agent Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). “If anyone finds out about it, family, friends, your wife, that would be a problem.”
What begins as a safe and profitable adventure takes a dangerous turn when he becomes a courier between the CIA and Panamanian CIA informant General Manuel Noriega. Next he signs onto an even more dangerous assignment, running arms to the contras in Nicaragua in their battle against the communist Sandinistas.
“Is this legal?” he asks. ”It is if you do it for the good guys,” says his Agent Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson).
Seduced by the money and the excitement he also takes gigs as a cocaine smuggler for the Medellin Cartel. “I’m working for the CIA, the DEA and Pablo Escobar,” he boasts. He sees himself as “just gringo who always delivers,” but his convoluted work life and allegiances make him a person of interest not only to everyone from Pablo “The King of Cocaine” Escobar to the DEA, the FBI and even the White House.
Drug cartel stories are tailor made for the movies. Populated by bigger-than-life characters like the wealthiest criminals in history like the Medellin Cartel members, the stories have it all—glamour, drama, moral ambiguity and the primal clash of good and evil. “American Made” has all that, although played in a lower key than movies like “Blow” or “Cocaine Cowboys.” It has a lighter touch—it’s not too violent and, oddly for a drug dealer movie, has no scenes where anyone actually samples the goods—which keeps things moving along at quite a clip but sheds next to no light on its characters, its go-go 80s setting or the political mess that turned into the Iran-Contra affair.
Echoes of “Top Gun” hang heavy over Cruise as the cockpit king Seals. He’s all teeth and grins, a charmer who can talk his way through almost any situation. He has nerves of steel and high-flying greed, a combo that should give us a compelling anti-hero but instead Cruise plays him as a decent guy who “didn’t ask enough questions.” Didn’t ask enough questions about the personal toll his work running guns and drugs for a cartel. Didn’t ask enough questions about human trafficking. He didn’t ask questions because he was greedy. He liked the suitcases of cash and fancy cars his job provided. If the movie had allowed Cruise (or vice versa) to actually explore Barry’s dark side the film might have delivered more of a punch.
There’s more character work in any episode of “Breaking Bad” or “Narcos” than “American Made’s” entire 115 minute running time but Cruise’s movie does have a sense of humour about itself that makes for an amiable, if not memorable, watch.
No longer content to simply offer up an endless string of remakes, reboots and reimaginings Hollywood is now in the business of creating universes. Marvel and DC lead the pack, generating big box office with movies that mix-and-match their flagship characters in ongoing and connected stories. Now others are looking to get a piece of that action.
This weekend’s “The Mummy,” a self-described “action-adventure tentpole with horror elements,” is the foundation of Universal Pictures’ Dark Universe. The studio aims to create a cross-pollinated world were their brand name monsters, like Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, are mixed and matched to infinity or at least as long as audiences will pay to see them.
The Mummy reinvents the story of ancient malevolence, presenting a new, female title character and adding Russell Crowe as Henry Jekyll, a doctor with a serum that unleashes his inner demons.
The idea of pairing up monsters is nothing new. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein saw The Wolf Man, Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster cross paths with The Invisible Man and Freddy Krueger battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees in a Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street combo pack but another monster movie mash up beats everything that came before it.
The Monster Squad, a fun 1987 teenage horror comedy sees Count Dracula recruit a posse of monsters — Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon — to retrieve and destroy an ancient amulet that holds the key to controlling the balance of good and evil in the world. Trouble is, he didn’t count on a band of fifth graders (and one chain-smoking eighth grade greaser) who call themselves the Monster Squad, driving a stake through his plans.
The boys are a geeky group who wear “Stephen King Rules” T-shirts and debating important topics like, ‘Who is the coolest monster?’ and ‘Does The Wolf Man have the biggest nards?’
The Monster Squad, despite the salty language (the boys swear, no doubt courtesy of screenwriter Shane Black who also wrote more adult fare like Lethal Weapon), the refreshing lack of political correctness, the violence and the presence of nightmare-inducing monsters this is, above all, a kid’s film. The youngsters are the heroes and battle the monsters in ways that only kids can. A garlic pizza proves to be Dracula’s undoing, and in one classic scene The Wolf Man is felled by a well-placed kick to “the nards.”
Director Fred Dekker says he set out to make an exciting teen adventure movie, but may have been a bit ahead of his time. In the post–Buffy the Vampire Slayer world we live in the mix of kids, humor and horror seems normal, but in 1987 it didn’t click with audiences.
“I like to think that Monster Squad, in its own small way, says something about what it is to be a kid and to be afraid in the world,” says Dekker, “and discovering the need for heroism.”
“It took several years before the combination of young people in jeopardy in genre-horror situations like Buffy and Goosebumps and Harry Potter really became acceptable. The audience wasn’t ready for it in the ’80s. Sure there was The Lost Boys and The Goonies, but specifically the kind of monster-slayer approach wouldn’t be popular for another ten or fifteen years. So I like to think that we were a little ahead of the curve.”
