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Movie Review - Mission Impossible 1-3
January 23, 2023
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One of my goals this year is to spend less time watching things I know I’ll hate because they’re new, or highly acclaimed, or will be “good for me” somehow, and more time watching things I’ll actually enjoy. Time is too precious to waste it on movies that make me cringe or depressed. I want art that’s uplifting more than edifying. Maybe someday that will change, but given the place in which I presently find myself, I know what I need.

I need uplifting stories.

Something I’ve done from time to time is Spy Movie Sunday, where I watch (you guessed it) a movie with a theme of espionage. On Sunday. With yet another Mission: Impossible movie on the horizon (with one of my favorite trailers in recent memory), I’ve accepted my mission to revisit the franchise. For the past three Sundays I’ve watched an M:I movie, and it’s been a blast. 

[Imagine a fuse running to a bomb here]

I don’t remember the first time I saw the original Mission: Impossible, but it was well after the fourth movie came out. Back in 1996 I was 16 and didn’t go to the movies very often. There were a lot of old TV shows being remade into movies at the time, and since the internet was still fairly new, film discussion was in the mainstream. Even with Bill Clinton mucking around the White House, there was still time for the movies on the news without making political.

Those were the days.

Even my dad knew what they were saying about the movie. He explained to me that a conceit of the old show was that everything was at least plausible and the movie didn’t follow the rule. That was enough for me to discount it. Why make a movie if you weren’t going to be true to the source? Later I learned fans were more upset about other changes to the show’s history. But watching it now, having seen very little of the show but many more movies, I think I can see it clearly.

Brian de Palma is usually a hack.

Don’t get me wrong, I love The Untouchables (also a quasi-remake of a TV series). I don’t love the way he tries to be Hitchcock without purpose. Hitch set his cameras at certain angles for a reason, but de Palma sets his cameras the way he does because Hitchcock once did. Sometimes it works. More often it’s distracting. But when the cinematography is good (like when Ethan comes to the realization in the diner that he’s been setup and his whole world is thrown off balance), it’s very good.

And that final chase is great, implausible or not.

I probably first saw Mission: Impossible II on Netflix. First impression: not as bad as I’d been led to believe. Not great, and I got bored with the over-the-top, over-dramatic action. But not bad. In one of my film school textbooks the author had gone to great pains to prove from a financial standpoint that Cruise couldn’t have done all his own stunts, so I came to it with a little cynicism. Some of that bad attitude has faded, and I still found myself rolling my eyes, but even the worst M:I movie is better than many current action movies.

Maybe the only goal was to make Cruise look cool. But to be fair, in 2000 he was at peak coolness.

The first movie was an ensemble, like the TV series. This is the movie that leans most heavily on Cruise’s star power and draw. Maybe that’s the problem. Ethan Hunt wasn’t built to be James Bond, and making him the focal point throws everything askew. I have to wonder if a better version once existed, and how after The Matrix the studio didn’t give John Woo more freedom. They clearly didn’t think the American audience was ready for anything with such a strong Asian cinema flavor. 

But Cruise came out looking cooler than ever.

Mission: Impossible III was actually the first one I saw. My roommate’s buddy had advance tickets and couldn’t find anyone else to go with him and made it pretty clear I was his last resort. Nothing personal. We weren’t friends, so I didn’t take it personally and just enjoyed the movie. This was before film school, and I wasn’t even aware that Cruise purportedly did his own stunts, so there was nothing to get in my way of liking the movie. But I was distracted.

I’d been binging Alias, also written and directed by J.J. Abrams. 

The only thing I remember about my first time seeing M:I III was that it felt like an episode of Alias with a male lead. All the rhythms are the same, the plot is the same, only the character is different. Oh, and I also remember it being the first time I saw Filipino stick fighting in movie, and since I was training in that in the time, that was pretty cool. I liked the movie well enough, but not so much that I wanted to search out the rest of series and see them anytime soon.

I still get that.

The third movie is fun while you’re watching it, but doesn’t leave much of an impression. Abrams, in his film directing debut, does a serviceable job, but lacks style. Back in 2006 it was all about the shaky cam, and Abrams submits to it to his detriment. It jars the visuals right out of your head. Even though I just watched the movie yesterday and liked it, I’m struggling to say much about it now.

Cruise’s coolness is dialed back. I can say that much.

If anything, the attempt seems to be humanizing Ethan Hunt. The guy’s getting married and for the first time we see him at home, pretending to be suburban. A plan goes wrong, and he gets sucked out a window in a moment that’s as funny as it is thrilling. I don’t remember anything more uncool happening to him in the last movie. It’s probably the sort of thing that works better on a TV show, though, and M:I III just seems like TV script with a blockbuster budget, and ultimately just as forgettable. 

Next Sunday I get to the really good stuff.

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F1 is Modern Western

As a nation, the United States is unique. We don’t share a genetic heritage, but a creed. Americans and our ideas come from all over the world. But we’re at our best when take those outside ideas and make them our own. Everything we have came from another culture, but there was a time when we could take things and collectively make them better.

Democracy? Check. Rock’n’roll? Check. Heck! Chinese food? Yes, we did.

Don’t hate. You know I’m right.

One of the greatest art forms we’ve given the world is the western genre. While rooted in courtly romances of King Arthur, we took the idea of the man on horseback who makes things right on his quest for something spiritual and made it distinctly American. Most of the time, these stories aren’t historically accurate, but that’s not the point. They’re soaked in the American ethos. For better or for worse, the western has become the American myth, even more so than 1776.

And the cool thing about myths is that you can take them and tell other stories. 

Star Trek (and later Firefly) took the western to space. 

A few weeks ago I was able to see F1: The Movie on IMAX, and I had high hopes. Director Joseph Krasinski had proved himself with Top Gun: Maverick, which is about as American as a modern movie can get. But mostly, I just wanted to see if he could do with racecars what he’d done with fighter jets. In that regard, I was everything I’d hoped it would be. The idea of Americanism didn’t even cross my mind, since F1 is primarily a European sport.

Boy, was I surprised.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes with all the careless cool of Paul Newman in his prime and a Steve McQueen swagger. While Pitt has never played a cowboy and isn’t a racecar driver in real life, Newman and McQueen played both, and did both. Hayes has been keeping himself busy with no-name races since an F1 crash nearly killed him some 30 years before. But when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), an old friend and rival, needs some wins to save the team, he tracks down Sonny.

And the old dog knows a few tricks.

Naturally, his tactics put him at odds with his teammate, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and his cocky attitude is a big red flag to the team’s engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden). So the movie all the tropes of a sports film, and I don’t think I need to summarize further. But it’s not a sports film. Or rather, it’s not just a sports a film. Surprise, surprise, it’s the western myth transposed into a racing a story.

It’s spelled out in the trailer, but it didn’t strike me until the very end.

Kate calls Sonny Hayes an “old school rough and tumble cowboy” in a line used in the marketing. When he arrives in the garage, only Ruben knows him. Sonny is the stranger in town. Like James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff, his method of restoring order and winning is unorthodox and effective. Like Shane, in that Alan Ladd classic, he’s guarded about his past. And like John Wayne in The Searchers and so many other westerns, Sonny Hayes is the outsider who must leave civilization once he’s made it civilized for those who belong there.

But he doesn’t.


Perhaps the hardboiled crime story, another uniquely American genre, is also an outgrowth of the western. Philip Marlow is the man who must walk down mean streets, who is not himself mean. As Raymond Chandler said, “He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Basically, the man he’s describing is dangerous, but not cruel. Dispassionate in taking revenge, and restrained by a code of honor.

But destined to be lonely, nonetheless.

Why we’ve made that an essential part of the American is a topic for another time. But there it is. And it’s the story of Sonny Hayes. At the end of the movie [SPOILER], he rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. The western isn’t dead. It’s still there, in essence, speaking to our hearts in different ways.

Nothing more American than that. 

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Girl-Power Isn't the Problem: Stop Treating Movies Like TV Pilots

Last weekend I was able to sneak off the theater for a screening of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Did I feel silly, telling the high school girl at the ticket counter, “One for Ballerina, and a small drink”? Well, not in the moment. 

I probably drank a liter of cherry vanilla Coke Zero, and that didn’t feel so great.

Plenty of box office analysts and Hollywood types are wracking their brains, trying to figure out why movies like Furiosa and Ballerina aren’t drawing huge crowds. Mad Max and John Wick are popular franchises, but apparently telling the stories of the women in those worlds isn’t working. Even if the movies are pretty good.

I’ve seen both, and they’re pretty good.

Some are arguing that no one will go near a movie that looks like it’s feminist girl-bossing. Others counter that movies like Alien and Kill Bill are female-led action films that were successful. Now, I’m not going to say that Ballerina is on par with those modern day classics. But I will say that, as a man watching the movie, it didn’t offend me. The movie never challenged me to confront any internalized misogyny. The small girl doesn’t take down John Wick in hand-to-hand combat.

Honestly, if you like franchise, whether you’re male or female, you should watch Ballerina.

In short, from a purely cinematic experience perspective, neither Furiosa nor Ballerina would be any better or worse with a male lead. Maybe that’s a hot take. But that’s mine, for whatever it’s worth. Well, okay, I wouldn’t watch a movie called Ballerina if it stared a dude. Nevertheless, I think you get my point. Petite women warriors aside, the plots and action are exactly as expected.

So what’s the deal?

Well, what no one seems to have noticed is that Ripley and The Bride weren’t replacing anyone. As we were watching their movies for the first time, we weren’t thinking about other characters for whom we already had a preference. Movies are more like TV than TV right now, and replacement characters have always been a hard sell, regardless of gender. We all remember Sam and Diane. Who still talks about Sam and Rebecca (even though Kirstie Alley won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the part)? I had to look up her name. 

No, they aren’t technically replacing them. It’s a spin-off, set in the same world.

Spin-offs tend to succeed when the characters are already well established (eg: Frasier). Furiosa and Ballerina are more like backdoor pilots, where new characters are dropped in for a single episode to sell us on the idea of a new show. This technique is very hit and miss on TV, and I can’t think of a single example of this working in a movie franchise. Film and television are very different mediums, and should be treated as such.

Still, if it doesn’t work on TV, it’s probably not gonna work at the movies. Not where new characters and spin-offs are concerned. 

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Maybe I’m just getting old, but it doesn’t feel like we had the thriving and distinct pop culture of past generations. Has there been a look or stye, or feeling, that defines this moment? Everything seems to have stagnated for the last twenty years. And it’s not as if I don’t pay attention. 

It’s making me nostalgic. 

Consequently, for the rest of the year, I’m prioritizing movies from 1995, the year I was twelve. At that time, my family didn’t really go to the theater, and when we did rent VHS tapes, more often than it is was older Disney movies or entirely forgettable Christian titles. Now that I’ve grown tired of trying to keep up with new releases, not there’s much worth watching anyway, it feels like a good time to catch up on those 30 year old movies that have become ingrained in what’s left of our pop culture.

So over on Criticless, I made a list.

Some of these are movies I’ve seen before, but not in a long time. Others will be first time watches for me. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I put on my list. It’s just movies that either interest me, or are currently in my collection, sadly unwatched. As things become available on streaming, I may add to the list. And if I don’t get to everything before the end of the year, no big deal.

Hopefully, they aren’t going anywhere. 

I’ll be posting some reviews and analysis as I go, so be sure to follow me here. 

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