BEFORE: Up early this morning because the Oscar nominations were announced today, and my phone was going to be buzzing no matter what. My boss was up for noms in two categories, animated short and animated feature, but was shut out this time around. Hey, my job was just to make sure the films were ELIGIBLE, which I did. I can't control the way people vote in the nomination process, and doing publicity to get more votes isn't my job, either. Once the paperwork is in to make sure the films are in the running, it's in the hands of fate.
It's been a long journey to see this film - I remember this was one that didn't run on premium cable for a LONG time. I guess some films want to milk every possible dollar from DVD sales and PPV before they allow the rabble to get a chance to see them. I considered buying this in the $5 DVD store a couple years ago, but they wanted like $14 for it instead of $5. I finally nabbed it during a free preview of the ePix channel last year. Then came the problem of scheduling it, and since the Jeremy Renner chain is linked to the Edward Norton chain, that became problematic, which I'll discuss in the next day or two.
Yep, you guessed it, Jeremy Renner carries over from "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters".
THE PLOT: The IMF is shut down when it's implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, causing Ethan Hunt and his new team to go rogue to clear their organization's name.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Mission: Impossible III" (Movie #350)
AFTER: The "Impossible" Mission Force is back. I put the words in quotes, because they always seem to find a way to make the mission work, so I guess it's never as impossible as they first believe. My dad had a quibble over the holidays with the Boston newscasters who describe everything as "unbelievable" - yet their job is to report the news, which is made up of things that happened, so they should be very believable, otherwise, how could they have happened? (Do you SEE where I get it from?)
Ethan Hunt first needs to be extracted from a stint in a Russian prison, which in his line of work, pretty much counts as vacation time. His team is then charged with breaking IN to the Kremlin, which is about as "impossible" as it gets, unless you have a bunch of nifty gadgets that haven't been invented yet for commercial use. Unfortunately, their mission also serves as a cover for the film's villain to get what HE wants, and make the IMF look like they took that thing instead of him.
You can see how far spy movies have come in the last 30 years by comparing this film to "Never Say Never Again". In the old days the villain would steal a couple of missiles, and these days you only need to steal the Russian launch codes and hack an Indian satellite. Much easier, plus you don't get all irradiated and stuff. But in the old days the villain would steal the missiles, demand money from the U.N. (or whoever) and then before the launch Bond would be there at the volcano-based lair to take care of things. These days the villain skips Step #2 and goes straight to launching the missiles - I know, right? Either he forgot to ask for the money, or the screenwriter did.
The strength of the IMF lies in having a back-up plan, or being able to come up with one on the fly when the first plan falls apart. For Ethan Hunt, this means scaling the outside of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in Dubai, and the world. It's funny, back in 1999 when they released "Entrapment", the tallest buildings were the Petronas Towers, and now the more things change, the more things stay the same.
Hey, at least this time someone remembered that when it's night on one side of the world, it's probably daytime on the other. That scene in "Taken 2" when Neeson's character drives into the U.S. embassy (which is in Ankara, by the way, not Istanbul) during the day, then calls his contact back in the U.S. for help - his contact is playing a round of golf, and is also seen in daytime, when it should have been the middle of the night. In tonight's film there's a nighttime party in Mumbai, while a missile is threatening San Francisco during the day - this makes much more sense.
NITPICK POINT: The M:I franchise is famous for those "false faces", those latex masks that make one person completely look another person - as long as that person is the same height, has the same build, and has an easy-to-fake accent. In other words, it's a movie convention that just wouldn't work in the real world. I think the Mythbusters debunked this when they had Adam wear a fake Jamie mask, and vice versa. You can use all the make-up you want, and it's still going to look like a guy wearing a mask. But that's not even my NP tonight (possible spoiler alert, so stop reading now if you haven't seen this...) it's the question of why Bad Guy #1 would wear a false face that made him look like Bad Guy #2? What's the point of disguising himself as someone who's also going to set off the facial recognition software of the good guys? Why not disguise himself as someone else, like a random guy on the street or an out-of-work actor? You know, someone not wanted by the law.
Also starring Tom Cruise (last seen in "Oblivion"), Paula Patton (last seen in "2 Guns"), Simon Pegg (last seen in "The World's End"), Michael Nyquist, Samuli Edelmann, Lea Seydoux, Josh Holloway, Miraj Grbic, with cameos from Ving Rhames (last seen in "Entrapment"), Michelle Monaghan (last seen in "Due Date"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "The Lone Ranger").
RATING: 7 out of 10 iPhones
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