So far we've seen Mission Impossible III -- stinkbomb
Really? How come you didn't like it? I'd agree it's heavily flawed (see my review below, which was written after I'd seen it for the first time), but having now sat through it three times I'd say it hits the spot as an entertaining summer actionfest.
My big screen viewing this summer:
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE IIIA very mixed bag.
To start with, don't believe the hype: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III certainly has its moments, but for the most part it's every bit as loud and incomprehensible as the much-reviled M:I-2. And whatever you think of M:I-2, its undeniable strength is the brilliance of its action scenes and stunts. But thanks to a combination of ropey effects work and shakycam that's so overused as to make THE BOURNE SUPREMACY look like something by Ozu, much of the action in M:I-3 is headache-inducing and even impossible to follow (I'm thinking particularly of the helicopter chase). The concepts of the action scenes are good, and some
do work well enough, but the execution tends to leave a lot to be desired. This matters because the film is about 90% action, and it's frequently very hard to tell exactly what's going on. It's a film that reeks of overkill. It's the cinematic equivalent of a huge, ferocious man coming at you with fists failing, shouting threats - you can tell that he's full of sound and fury, but much of what he's saying gets lost in the OTT delivery.
This isn't the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE series given an almighty creative kick up the backside and knocked outta the park into a whole new level of class and intelligence - it's simply a blend of the first two. One of the reasons I'd been looking forward to M:I-3 was that it seemed extraordinary that the plot was almost entirely under wraps right up to its release. I pictured a film full of tremendously inventive twists and turns that had been painstakingly kept secret. Turns out that there were no spoilers because there was really nothing to spoil. And forget what you may have read about this being the long-overdue "team movie" for a franchise hitherto hogged by Cruise. Maggie Q, Rhames and Rhys-Meyers have very little to do but make unconvicing attempts to talk Ethan Hunt out of whatever mindblowingly risky thing he happens to be planning. This is every bit as much of a Cruisefest as the others.
Cruise
does give a pretty good performance, though, although Hunt remains a fundamentally uninteresting character, despite a bit of delving into his personal life. Fishburne and Hoffman are also good. I'm not normally a viewer for whom a film sinks or swims on its score, but I find the one for M:I-3 so tuneless, derivative and overbearing as to be compelled to comment on its awfulness.
Where M:I-3 really succeeds is in the style and suspense (albeit generally suspense without payoff) that Abrams brings to the table; for a debut feature, this is sometimes pretty impressive stuff. Things like the tracking shot of Cruise running through Shanghai, the way a bad guy dies.... there's some real visual flair here. Too bad that the script is scribbled-on-the-back-of-a-restaurant-napkin nonsense (that still somehow results in a film that feels incredibly overlong).
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS While it seems to make a commendable effort to be not nearly as OTT as you might expect from something of this genre (for instance, at the end, the villain does not "die" six times, always getting up again for the sort of "surprise" final throw you could set your watch by*, until finally being put away for good by another 15 bullets to the chest at point blank range), WHEN A STRANGER CALLS kind of goes to the opposite extreme by being rather uneventful for the most part.... without, and this is fatal, generating much suspense (as Hitchcock rightly pointed out, there is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of one, but sadly director Simon West doesn't do edge-of-seat all that well).
Neither especially bad nor particularly good, it's a so-so timekiller. End of.
*He only "dies" four times. Nah, just kidding. I haven't spoiled the ending, but let me just say that it's a jawdroppingly blatant ripoff of the final moments of a very famous horror flick from the '70s (although for all I know the original WASC had the same shopworn finale).
