119 - Mission Impossible 3 review redux

I reviewed this film back when it was released. That review can be reached here.




"Mission: Impossible III" opens on taunt, surprising note. Super-spy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is shackled to a chair, the barrel of a gun is pressed against his wife’s head, and Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) declares "I’m going to count to ten. If you don’t tell me where the Rabbit’s Foot is, I’m going to kill her." For a moment, we’re hopeful that the film, will prove to be an intense, wildly entertaining blockbuster. Instead, we get an occasionally amusing, plot-hole ridden, stupid-beyond-belief $150 million tribute to Cruise’s gargantuan ego. In comparison to the rest of the film the opening feels like part of a better screenplay accidentally got pasted on by mistake.

Oh sure, the film has its fair share of violent and spectacular scenes. Ethan and his team lovable killers find themselves spinning from a German steam and sparks factory to the Vatican to Shanghai (populated by approximately 12 Chinese people), never bothering to explain why things are happening where they are, other than that the locations look cool.

By the end, I feel as if I can see why foreigners often see Americans as gung-ho, reckless cowboys; Ethan has murdered more than a handful of Chinese nationals and delivered a WMD into the hands of terrorists in a harebrained attempt to rescue his goo-goo eyed piece of ass (insert wife in place of ‘piece of ass’ if appropriate). A threadbare plot concerning a super-weapon and an arms dealer justifies the explosions, as well as the kind of inter-agency back stabbing that "24" does much better (for comparison, 120 hours of "24" cost as much "Mission Impossible 3" and does everything better).

Speaking of TV shows, Tom Cruise hand-picked J.J. Abrams, creator of "Alias" and "Lost", to direct "Mission: Impossible III". He may be a first time feature director, but his skills may be a moot point, as the film clearly belongs to Cruise. I’m reminded of how Stanley Kubrick supposedly referred to himself as hired help for Kirk Douglas when talking about "Spartacus". Cruise features in virtually every scene, the camera never forgetting to frame him in macho, heroic close-up. It’s the kind of invulnerable killing machine that we’d all like to pretend we are, except that Cruise has the money and star power to put the fantasy on screen.

Cruise’s performance is a double-edged sword. He looks old enough to be experienced and yet still in shape for his hair-raising work. But boyish charm, one of his trademarks, feels awkward on a 43-year-old man. I’d have liked to see more of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s sadistic villain. If Hoffman can believably go from Truman Capote to a vicious arms dealer, he can play anything, but unfortunately his screen time doesn’t surpass twenty minutes. The supporting cast fill their banal roles as well as they can; support Ethan, yell at Ethan, shoot at Ethan, congratulate Ethan for outrageous attacks on the world’s most populous sovereign state, etc.



The plot hinges on a mysterious WMD called the Rabbit’s Foot. An English technician theorizes the weapon may be a near-magical device that contains the destructive power to wipe out everything from children to ice cream parlors, which suggests that the British haven’t heard the news about nuclear weapons yet. The Rabbit’s Foot is clearly a MacGuffin, a term used to describe plot devices that keeps the story in motion, but otherwise has little to nothing to do with it. But by the same measure, the same can be said of Julia, Ethan’s wife. The film quickly establishes Julia as a hopelessly cute but bland love interest, her primary purpose being to smile when safe, sob fearfully when threatened, and consummate her marriage in the medical supply room of a hospital.

Why not expand on their relationship? When they marry, Julia believes Ethan to be a Department of Transportation drone, which says little for both of them. She doesn’t pay enough attention to her fiancée, and he has no problem concealing crucial details of his life from her, details that eventually get her kidnapped and nearly killed. Instead of portraying their relationship as childishly affectionate, why not be provocative and seriously explore the pitfalls of Ethan’s double life? Should we believe that his spouse is important enough to commit treason for, but not enough to inform her he has a job that could result in the torture, mutilation, and death of them both?

In a brief scene, Ethan’s partners insist that normal relationships are impossible for men such as them, and discuss how it affects their edgy, often solitary existence. I’d gladly trade a few $30 million action sequences for a couple more scenes like that discussion.

2 out of 5

118 - Marie Antoinette review

"Let them eat cake," Marie Antoinette supposedly said in response to a bread shortage in Paris. This tidbit of royal callousness constitutes the majority of knowledge the average American has concerning the long dead French queen. Never mind that no evidence actually exists that supports her ever uttering the phrase, or anything even resembling it for that matter.

Of course, we live in a world where even most college students can’t name more than one American vice-president or correctly identify the Soviet Union as an Allied or Axis power. Perhaps this sad thought ensured I would thoroughly enjoy "Marie Antoinette", Sofia Coppola’s latest film to examine a female protagonist emotionally isolated by her surroundings. Kirsten Dunst plays the teen queen, a ridiculously spoiled yet seemingly benign monarch who ultimately fills her preordained position as well as could have been asked, in addition to never actually uttering the infamous phrase.

"Marie Antoinette" begins before Marie was even French. At age 14, the Austrian princess who finds herself married off to Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), the heir to the French throne, a to bolster an alliance between the two nations. As Marie nears the border, she is stripped of all of her possessions, from her clothes to her dog and even her friends before being ferried to France to marry a boy she has never met. A soundtrack of 1980’s rock decorates the soundtrack, strangely resonating more effectively than any classical music that springs to mind.

Marie’s life is one of luxury, but at a heavy price. Marie patiently must follow custom after custom, such as allowing ladies-in-waiting to slowly dress her in the cold from the moment she wakes up. Meals with her husband are held in public, and everyone impatiently waits for her to produce children, a difficult task as Louis XVI finds himself more concerned with key-making than love-making. People of lower rank can’t even address her unless addressed first.

Here is one of the many ways in which "Marie Antoinette" illuminates; we can see that despite her lofty position in society, Marie is a prisoner to her environment. It may be much more comfortable than seemingly endless hard labor in the fields, but it comes with its own torment. If having the treasury of an entire nation at your disposal can’t buy you happiness, no amount of money can.

The film pays very little attention to the politics of 18th century France, but so did Marie. A brief scene has Louis XVI deciding to support the American Revolution, but that sequence seems to exist mostly to give domestic audiences something to connect to. While it may be easy to dote on Marie’s extravagant spending and dissociation towards the workings of her country when analyzing her as a queen, the truth is more complicated. She spent exorbitant amounts of money on personal conveniences, but so did other members of the monarchy (in fact, she spent progressively less as she aged). If most people have little to no understanding of how money works, why should a girl who has never had to even touch currency in her entire life? Towards the end, Coppola creates an especially effective and tense atmosphere as Marie gazes out of Versailles at a furious revolutionary mob; it’s the first time the audience has seen commoners who were not servants, and implies the same for her.

As far as politics are concerned, Marie and her husband were drafted into their roles by luck of being the ancestors of men who proclaimed themselves to be mouthpieces of God, with choice or merit having nothing to do with their selection. Despite her title, Marie is treated as a useful tool by the powers behind the scenes, to be used or disposed of as needed.

The greatest strength of the film is that it breathes a vivid life into this long dead figure. Watching her play with friends, cope with her surroundings, fall in love, and fear for her children reminds us that the inhabitants of years past were not merely words on a textbook, but as alive as any of us. This realization makes every moment of the film bittersweet, as we know that the ultimate destiny of this girl was to have her head sliced off in front of a rapturous crowd.

4.5 out of 5

117

Three reasons I find politics insufferable these days: Michael J. Fox, Rush Limbaugh, and John Kerry.

First, the Fox ad. All of this outrage over Limbaugh's comment reeks of phoniness, enough so that a child could spot it. I have a hard time believing that the left side of the American political spectrum, which thought it was fine for George Clooney to ridicule Charlton Heston's Alzheimer's Disease, is just really bent out of shape that Limbaugh would ridicule Fox.

Of course, they completely ignore Limbaugh's original question, which is whether or not Fox faked the symptoms of manipulated his medicine to produce them, a perfectly valid spectulation, although certainly not politically correct. As for all of these Facebook groups demanding Limbaugh be executed for his remarks, so much for liberal support of free speech and opposition to the death penalty.

On the other side of things, we have Sen. Kerry's recent gaffe where he effectively said that people who don't study hard will wind up in the military, fighting in Iraq. Looking past all of the outrage for this one (infinitely more genuine than the Limbaugh outrage), I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and say he likely doesn't believe that the army consists of nothing but uneducated bumpkins. This guy volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam and won a Silver Star, no small task.

That hasn't stopped people from hysterically overreacting. Democrats ranging from Hilary Clinton to local candidate Bruce Braley have instantly tried to distance themselves from Kerry. The gall of this is astonishing, as this man was the Democratic nominee for president just two years ago, and now they're going to turn him into a pariah because of some stupid remark.

How can anyone seriously enjoy this bullshit?