The Jackie Chan of the West Strikes Again: A Review of Mission Impossible: Fallout

written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie

For various reasons, I was unable to watch Mission: Impossible: Fallout until last night, and an unfortunate by-product of having to wait so long to see it, even as I did my best to insulate myself from the film's increasingly glowing reception among audiences and critics, was that my expectations were, perhaps unfairly, all but sky-high by the time my wife and I caught a late-night screening.

Following the Impossible Mission Forces' capture of Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) at the end of the Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation, IMF top agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) learns that Lane's cabal, once known as the Syndicate, have rebranded themselves as "the Apostles" and remain bent on establishing a new world order by completely destroying the old one. Even more frighteningly, they hope to collaborate with a like-minded terrorist named John Lark, to whom they plan to sell three stolen plutonium cores. When Hunt and his IMF crew Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benjie Dunn (Simon Pegg) are unable to acquire the cores from the Apostles in an attempt to buy them, they find themselves on a mission to retrieve them before they end up in the hands of Lark. However, because Hunt put saving Luther over securing the cores, Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett) the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who took over from Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) who now heads the IMF, no longer trusts Hunt's judgment and grafts August Walker (Henry Cavill) a "special actions" operative to his hip. The path to the plutonium promises to be a treacherous one and Hunt and his team will have to deal with a shady power broker (Vanessa Kirby) who can get the plutonium for them, at terrible cost, and even the resurfacing of their own ally Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) whose agenda is unclear and who, therefore, could be dangerous to them.

I have consistently enjoyed these Mission: Impossible movies since the third film, just before they started replacing the numbers with subtitles. For me, the highlight of the series remains Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol or the fourth installment. This movie continues that standard of quality that has been the norm since J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot production company started producing these films. Returning director Christopher McQuarrie, who also wrote the script, improves on the already commendable work he did in the last movie. As with all of these movies, and just about any self-respecting spy flick, the film is a globe-spanning adventure that starts off in Ireland, trots through France and ends up in the mountains of Kashmir. The plot is reasonably coherent, if notably hackneyed, while the action set pieces are spectacular.

And then, of course, there is the utter commitment that the film's (and franchise's) star, Tom Cruise, puts on full display here for his loyal viewers. Whether it's learning how to HALO jump, fly a helicopter, or run around with a broken ankle, there is apparently no challenge too great for Tom to take on, and the film is that much better for his total dedication. So much so that more than a few of the film critics who have given this film rave reviews have gone so far as to call this movie the greatest action movie of all time.

That is where I feel I have to respectfully disagree.

Now, the movie starts out very strong, with both the much-ballyhooed (and truly awesome) HALO jump and the absolutely heart-stopping men's room fistfight happening within rapid succession of one another, and to be fair it does not scrimp on the action even after these scenes are done. Now, my problem with the claim that this is "the best action movie ever" is that most, if not all of the action set pieces that follow those two sequences feature something that's been done before, sometimes within the Mission: Impossible franchise itself, and while taking inspiration from other films isn't always a bad thing, there's only so many times one can lift action sequences from elsewhere before it starts to take a bit of luster off the product.

The car chase scene through Paris is something we've seen before, in films like Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity and John Frankenheimer's criminally-underappreciated Ronin, and some of the sequence even evokes one of the granddaddies of the car chase: The French Connection. The motorbike scene is certainly impressive, with Tom Cruise driving against traffic, but it's a bit evocative of The Dark Knight, and even of the more recent Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation. The climactic sequence of Ethan Hunt running around in search of someone important while Benjie barks in his ear was done in Mission: Impossible III, albeit with a different location. Also, the rooftop chasing portion of that sequence was far more effectively done in The Bourne Ultimatum, but more on that later. Also, if the climactic scene involving a coordinated attempt to defuse two bombs, or one big bomb from two (or more) locations, felt distinctly familiar, it's because it's a rehash of the same storytelling device that was employed in Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

Make no mistake; they're all still extremely well-staged, and it really helped that Cruise went full-on Jackie Chan for all of these sequences, but the extent to which many critics have been willing to forgive the flimsy script (which they often describe as its weak point, right off the bat) in the name of the stunts borders on the irrational. Honestly, I could get why Mad Max: Fury Road was so well-received three years ago; it was just so off-the-wall crazy that it could not be ignored and to be honest, really offered something we had never seen before, even though there had been three other Mad Max films. M:I:Fallout doesn't even come close.

Also, if we're talking about all-time greats for action movies, I respectfully submit that M:I:Fallout falls short of Paul Greengrass' The Bourne Ultimatum, in which stunning action set pieces are deftly married to a solid script and intense performances for a really powerful finale to the original trilogy of Bourne films (which, as in the case of so many beloved cinematic trilogies, are the only films in the series that really matter). Yes, I know Greengrass is frequently criticized for his "shaky cam" and quick cuts, but unlike the droves of clones that his approach to action movies spawned (I'm looking at you, Taken films), he used these devices to serve the greater narrative and not just to make his action star look "cool." Also, if we're going to talk about authentically bone-crunching fight sequences, M:I:Fallout faces somewhat stiff competition in the form of the John Wick movies. In short, "greatest action movie ever" feels distinctly like hyperbole, perhaps coming from film critics who are weary of comic-book-based blockbusters dominating the action movie landscape. If that's the case, then there's something slightly hypocritical about their overflowing adulation, as this film is a superhero movie just as surely as anything bearing "Marvel" or "DC" branding is. After all, a guy who can survive smashing his helicopter into another and then falling onto a freaking mountain is a superhero by any reasonable standard, even if he isn't wearing a gaudy costume.

I realize this review feels slightly unkind, but in truth I genuinely enjoyed this movie, even more than I did the last one. I just honestly find myself a bit bewildered by the growing consensus that it's some kind of high watermark in action filmmaking, which I find kind of unfair to all of the films from which it borrowed somewhat liberally. It's a really, really good movie, but I'm not about to get carried away.

7.9/10

Silly Old Bear: A Review of Christopher Robin

directed by Marc Forster
written by Alex Ross Perry, Tom McCarthy, and Allison Schroeder (screenplay), Greg Booker and Mark Steven Johnson (screen story)

As live-action adaptations of beloved Disney animated features goes, this one flew pretty low under my radar, so low, in fact, that until I saw a trailer for it scarcely two months ago, I didn't even know this movie existed. That said, I'm pretty glad I saw it, especially with the family.

As a child, Christopher Robin (Orton O'Brien) is a regular visitor to the Hundred Acre Wood, where he often has whimsical adventures with this friends Winnie the Pooh (Jim Cummings), Piglet (Nick Mohammed), Tigger (also Cummings), Eeyore (Brad Garrett), Owl (Toby Jones), Rabbit (Peter Capaldi), Kanga (Sophie Okonedo) and Roo (Sara Sheen). With them, his favorite pastime is doing a whole lot of nothing. These adventures end when he is shipped off to boarding school and, in the years that follow, spends a whole lot of time doing a whole bunch of "somethings" like getting married, fighting in a war, and landing a job.

Years later, adult Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor), who now works as the efficiency manager at the Winslow luggage company, faces a serious problem: if he is unable to cut company costs by at least 20%, a lot of people in the company stand to lose their jobs. Working on this means that, yet again, he won't be able to take time off with his family, namely his wife Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) and his daughter Madeline (Bronte Carmichael). Stressed out from the monumental work ahead of him, on top of the work he's already done, Christopher knocks over a jar of honey on his kitchen table, when then spills onto one of his childhood drawings of Winnie the Pooh. He magically ends up summoning Pooh, who (also magically) makes the trip from the Hundred Acre Wood to London and recruits Christopher Robin on a quest to find his missing friends. The real quest, however, is for Christopher Robin to find what's been missing from his life for far too long.

I honestly wouldn't have pegged Winnie the Pooh as a prime candidate for a live-action adaptation, but then, neither would I have done the same for the even less well-known Pete's Dragon, the 1970s animation/live-action hybrid which Disney successfully remade two years ago, but by telling the remake using the old "child-grown-up-into-midlife-crisis" setup that Steven Spielberg employed with the Peter Pan update Hook way back in 1991, the filmmakers found a way to make the story work, if only just.

The writing is extremely uneven; the scriptwriters apparently don't really know how to deal with the concept of a grown Christopher Robin interacting with stuffed animals, so they just play it for laughs, and to be fair it works a few times, but the gimmick does wear thin. Also, the movie quite regrettably fails to cash in on its "period piece" charm thanks to some dialogue that not only feels clunky but also distinctly anachronistic. Also, transplanting these beloved characters into CGI versions for a live action film may have been done with technical proficiency, but to my mind the cartoon's heart didn't quite make the transition.

The saving grace, however, is the live-action performances by McGregor, Atwell, and Carmichael, who, even as they grapple with the aforementioned strange dialogue, still manage to convey the impression of a family in crisis, even as the plot clearly spells it out. McGregor in particular brings a nice middle-aged charm to the role, succeeding where even the late, great Robin Williams failed when he played a middle-aged, burned out Peter Pan. I had worried that McGregor's Hollywood ship had sailed and that he would forever be consigned to little-seen movies or supporting roles in big movies like Beauty and the Beast, but apparently Hollywood's not done with him yet.

Also, with more live-action adaptations of animated classics in the pipelines, like The Lion King and Aladdin, it's clear Disney isn't done riding this particular gravy train.

I found this movie an acceptable distraction, but really, considering rising ticket prices, I do hope Disney tries a bit harder with their future adaptations.

6.5/10