Monster Mash Mess: The Mummy

The Good: Some funny lines, Decent special effects
The Bad: Lousy character development, Predictable plot arc, No truly memorable performances, Ridiculous issues with suspension of disbelief
The Basics: Even if the preview trailers hadn't spoiled most of it, The Mummy was legitimately terrible.


One of the worst aspects of the last few Summer Blockbuster Seasons is that the preview trailers for some of the biggest films have been so revealing that the viewer has essentially seen the film by sitting through the preview before another movie. When I sat down to The Mummy, there was very little that I felt I had not already seen in the movie. Sadly, it did not take long for that idea to be borne out. The only major aspects of The Mummy not ruined by the preview trailer was the inclusion of actor Jake Johnson in the role of Tom Cruise's sidekick and the identity and obvious complications that result from Russell Crowe playing Dr. Jekyll.

Unfortunately, neither revelation truly makes The Mummy better or even worth watching. Jake Johnson plays the rogue Chris Vail and the initial fun of seeing him in The Mummy wears off quickly. In addition to his character being the first major casualty of the film, given the opportunity, Johnson plays to his strengths with a sarcastic delivery that is entirely familiar to those who enjoy his character on New Girl. Sadly, despite playing a zombie for the bulk of the film, Johnson shows off no real new skills or acting range in the movie.

Crowe's role as Dr. Jekyll opens up a disturbing failure in the suspension of disbelief. While The Mummy asks viewers to accept a number of supernatural elements, the protagonist Jenny Halsey is a scientifically literate character who is ethically-guided and smart. As she dominates much of the first third of The Mummy before Jekyll and his organization are introduced, she instantly lends credibility to the shadowy organization that is engaged in studying and stopping supernatural creatures on Earth. The problem, however, comes in when Dr. Jekyll is introduced and his alter-ego, Hyde, surfaces and is recognized as a separate entity by the computer system. It absolutely stymies believability that a powerful organization with an immense financial backing and no accountability would be led by someone suffering from such a dangerous, unstable, and predictably destructive condition as Dr. Jekyll.

In ancient times, a woman kills her husband before she is entombed herself. In modern Iraq, Nick Morton and Chris Vail are using their military intelligence connections to gain access to antiquities to steal. On the hunt for treasure, Nick sleeps with Jenny Halsey to get a map from her. After stealing her map, Nick and Chris end up in a combat zone where they inadvertently discover a tomb. Exploring the tomb with Halsey, the scientist recognizes that the ancient location - in addition to being about a thousand miles out of place - is designed to keep in something, as opposed to keep the dead buried. Nick, however, is determined and he convinces Colonel Greenway to exhume the sarcophagus. On the plane with the sarcophagus, Chris falls asleep and becomes possessed, attempting to cut loose the sarcophagus. Between the gunplay in the cargo hold and a swarm of crows, the plane goes down with only Halsey surviving.

Despite dying in the plane crash, Nick wakes up in a morgue in England. Halsey is shocked that he appears to have survived, while Nick is unsettled by seeing Chris various places. The two head in the direction of the plane's wreckage, though Nick seems to be psychically linked with the occupant of the sarcophagus and brings them to her current resting place. What follows is a long chase wherein Ahmanet, the mummy who was in the sarcophagus and is now resurrected, kills and takes control of people, hunts Nick and Jenny and is then captured by Halsey's organization. While Dr. Jekyll wants to put Ahmanet down permanently, his mechanism for doing so means that Nick, too, must die.

The Mummy is not a particularly compelling film as the emotional investment the viewers might have in the characters on screen is entirely lacking. Nick is not inherently interesting, in fact, he seems very much like a half-baked version of Indiana Jones without the charisma of Harrison Ford (doesn't Indiana Jones sleep with a woman to steal her map, too?). Halsey is generically presented as both the dupe (she slept with Nick, though as he points out, they hadn't intended to have a relationship) and a scientist. Halsey, however, is not credibly written as she does not seem particularly smart or resourceful. Despite beginning The Mummy with a sense of authority, Halsey spends much of The Mummy being dragged along like a traditional damsel in distress.

Dr. Jekyll is included in The Mummy as a ridiculous conceit. The idea of the organization that Jekyll runs is an attempt to build a franchise - his laboratory has a vampire skull, the arm of what appears to be the Creature From The Black Lagoon, etc. - but his character is a poor choice for running the organization. Add to that, The Mummy pops the cork early on Dr. Jekyll by revealing Hyde right away, leaving no real surprise for future films in the same shared universe.

Sofia Boutella is fine as Ahmanet, exhibiting no real traces of the character she played in Star Trek Beyond (reviewed here!), but the role is not a particularly complex one. Similarly, Tom Cruise has done the "action hero" thing so much that there is not truly anything left for him to mine in the genre. Cruise's role of Nick Morton adds nothing to his portfolio; he shows us nothing we have not seen from him before many, many, many times. In fact, it was not long into The Mummy that I started thinking, "No wonder all Cruise was talking about in the week The Mummy came out was the sequel to Top Gun!" Cruise is given some objectively funny lines to deliver, but he is upstaged on the humor front by Jake Johnson and his jokes tend to fall flat.

Ultimately, The Mummy is an action-horror movie without any real spark. Viewers can save their time and money by simply watching the preview trailer; there is not much substance to the film beyond that, just long sequences of more of the same and ridiculous conceits that fail to land.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Wonder Woman
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Baywatch
Alien: Covenant
Guardians Of The Galaxy, Volume 2

1.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Spoiler-Free Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation!

The Good: Decent performances, Good pacing, Engaging plot
The Bad: Very low on character development, Predictable plot reversals
The Basics: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is fun, but hardly surprising and not at all a character-driven film.


In most major movie franchises, the work gets to the point where viewers can legitimately say, "You've seen one, you've seen them all." The James Bond franchise is an excellent example in that regard and there are several outings in the franchise that feel more like a parody of themselves, as opposed to legitimate outings. The Mission: Impossible franchise has been a pretty rocky one, but after truly being thrilled by Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (reviewed here!), I actually found myself getting excited about the latest installment, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (despite the big action sequences being ruined by the film's trailer!). And, for a fun summer popcorn movie, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation does all that it is supposed to.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is not to the eye-rolling point where viewers are likely to feel they have seen the whole film before (especially the beginning), but for veterans of the franchise the reversals are beginning to get far more telegraphed. And that is the real missed opportunity of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation: this installment has a formidable villain, but it is limited to the conventions of the genre, as opposed to exploring the unique aspects of the story. So, much the way Die Another Day (reviewed here!) did an inadequate job of exploring the effects of a shellshocked Bond, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation does not actually explore how Ethan Hunt squaring off with - essentially - his equal and opposite, affects the character.

Following a mission to Belarus where Ethan Hunt manages to intercept a shipment of biological weapons, the Impossible Missions Force is disbanded by its Senate oversight board. Hunt's attempt to make it to a London safehouse puts him in the crosshairs of a dangerous individual who plans to have him tortured for information. But the interrogation is quick as Hunt is rescued by a woman he does not know and manages to escape, while she remains behind to infiltrate the Syndicate. With the IMF shut down by the Director of the CIA, Hunley, Brandt and Benji Dunn are assimilated into the CIA while Hunt goes on the run to try to investigate the Syndicate himself.

Six months later, the CIA sends a team to Havana to apprehend Hunt (whom they believe is there) and they find what he wanted them to; his assembled information on the Syndicate, which is an intelligence agency made up entirely of international intelligence agents who appear to have died in the line of duty on prior missions. Hunt enlists Benji to help him identify the leader of the Syndicate in Austria, but the mission goes horribly wrong. Soon, Hunt, Benji, and the Syndicate double agent Ilsa Faust are on the run from both the Syndicate and the CIA.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is fast-paced and engaging despite the reversals that are pretty predictable. If it's Mission: Impossible, at some point, one of the characters will be revealed to be someone else wearing a high-tech mask. In this regard, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is par for the course. And there are the chases. They are good, but the menace is telegraphed and the chases are pretty average.

The performances in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation are good, but most of them are hardly exceptional. In fact, the best one is the performance by Sean Harris. Harris plays the villainous Solomon Lane and he is so good with his controlled body language and tone of quiet menace that he was utterly unrecognizable as the same actor who played Fifield in Prometheus (reviewed here!). His performance elevates what we expect from the villain and while Tom Cruise does some fairly impressive stunts in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Cruise's performance is bland by comparison. In fact, Cruise is stuck characterizing Lane as impressive more than he makes Hunt the equal of the adversary.

Ultimately, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is all right and it is entertaining, but it is not much more than that.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Dragon Blade
Fantastic 4
Jenny's Wedding
Ant-Man
Lila & Eve
Minions
Inside Out
Jurassic World

6.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for a listing of all the films I have reviewed, from Best To Worst!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Unremarkable Sequel: Mission: Impossible 2 Is Entirely Unimpressive

The Good: Adequately performed, Moments of concept/character
The Bad: Absolutely dull protagonists, Painfully predictable, Horrible dialogue, Ridiculous action sequences
The Basics: Playing one trick over and over and over and over again, Mission: Impossible 2 feels like exactly what it is: a cheap sequel.


As a movie reviewer, there are any number of films that I watch based on its newness, potential popularity and the likely interest of my readers. There are, as an unfortunate offshoot of that, movies that I watch then somewhat out of rote; to complete the gaps in a film series I once began or saw later sequels to. When I sat down to Mission: Impossible 2, it was certainly one of those movies; I saw the two most recent sequels and a few months ago, I saw the first film in the series with Tom Cruise. I saw Mission: Impossible 2 as a nice break from going through the James Bond films (I only have the Dalton and Brosnon years left!), but honestly, I did not “miss” the movie when I did not go see it in theaters fourteen years ago.

My initial antipathy toward Mission: Impossible 2 was certainly appropriate; I cannot think of a sequel in recent memory that was less exciting or interesting than Mission: Impossible 2. Mission: Impossible 2 feels like exactly what it is: a blasé sequel that is more designed for the spectacle of Summer Blockbuster Season than a viewing that evaluates substance. From heavily-choreographed car chases to the opening rock climbing scene to generic long-shots of Ethan Hunt standing on an Australian prairie, everything about Mission: Impossible 2 screams “look, don’t think!”

A plane carrying a Russian scientist, Dr. Nekhorvich, and his bag with a deadly genetically-engineered disease (Chimera) and its cure (Bellerophon) crashes after Nekhorvich believes he has met with agent Ethan Hunt (using the alias Dmitri). The real Ethan Hunt’s vacation is interrupted when he is tasked with recruiting the brilliant thief, Nyah Nordoff-Hall for the mission to recover the Chimera virus. Hunt tracks Hall to a swanky villa where she is attempting to steal a necklace that is going to come up for auction days later. Hunt tests Hall and offers her immunity from international prosecution for her many past crimes in exchange for helping him on his mission. After a protracted race, Hall reluctantly agrees and Ethan Hunt gets his mission: Hunt is tasked with getting Hall close to Sean Ambrose, the man who impersonated Hunt on the plane, so they may recover Chimera.

When the Impossible Missions Forces put out a bulletin that Hunt has been imprisoned in Seville, Nyah is rescued by her old beau, Ambrose. Nyah and Hunt’s Impossible Missions team converge on Sydney, Australia, where Ambrose and his team have taken up residence. But Ambrose is not stupid; his deputy, Hugh Stamp, is suspicious of the timing of her return and performs surveillance on her. Using Nyah, Ethan and his team learn just how lethal the Chimera virus is. They track the CEO of Biocyte, who is trying to buy back the virus and its cure. Ambrose has the cure, but not the virus; so Ethan Hunt ends up in the Biocyte facility at the same time as Ambrose, with both attempting to get the virus. In a game of cat and mouse, Hunt works to destroy all of the virus, while Ambrose tries to get the final sample to sell on the black market.

Mission: Impossible 2 lacks iconic scenes and moments that make it into widespread pop culture. The bungey jumping scene in Mission: Impossible 2 has the feeling of being a cheap retread of the scene from Mission: Impossible where Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt does acrobatics that prevent him from touching a pressure-sensitive floor after rappelling into an otherwise secure room. While there are plenty of movies that do not have big moments that make it into the collective consciousness, the fact that Mission: Impossible 2 has nothing that comes close when the first film in the franchise only accents how mundane the movie is.

Fans of spy thrillers will be utterly unsurprised by Mission: Impossible 2. The reversals are telegraphed so far ahead that it is astonishing the writers even bothered with the direction they went. In the Mission: Impossible world, latex masks may be made so precisely that they completely fool intimate inspection. In Mission: Impossible 2, that is established in the first scene and so many characters use that same technology, so when director John Woo continues to use that conceit to “surprise” viewers, it is anything but surprising.

The writing in Mission: Impossible 2 is disappointing in that it attempts to disguise characterization and themes as dialogue in such a clunky way that it makes the viewer wince. When Nyah is rescued by Hunt within the Biocyte facility, there is a particularly horrible line that tries to nail home how the first impression of Nyah is not accurate (or the character has evolved) and it is so inorganic that it feels utterly contrived. Ironically, the character of Nyah is one of the few worthwhile ones in Mission: Impossible 2. I like characters who do not shy away from acts of sacrifice and Nyah rises to the occasion at a key moment, making a somewhat droll film watchable at the very least.

The villains in Mission: Impossible 2 are unfortunately generic. John McCloy is a greedy CEO whose business is built on creating viruses and cures, Hugh Stamp is the ultimate generic psychopath sidekick to the villain. Sean Ambrose is basically a thug who has exceptional knowledge of his adversary, which makes him interesting for about five minutes out of his entire time on screen. The most impressive aspect of Ambrose is his ultimate plan; instead of a diabolical plan to rule to world or kill a lot of people, he wants to make money the way rich people do: executing stock options. He just needs the seed money to buy Biocyte before the Chimera virus makes the stock price skyrocket.

The generic quality of the adversaries mirrors the blandness of the heroes. Ethan Hunt is granted no distinguishing characteristics in Mission: Impossible 2. He is a standard super spy the likes of which has been seen in every James Bond film ever and virtually every other spy film that prioritizes spectacle over reality in its storytelling. Tom Cruise does an adequate job of running, jumping and shooting guns in Mission: Impossible 2, but he and his co-stars are playing archetypes as opposed to actual characters.

Mission: Impossible 2 is a dull way to waste two hours, but it is not a movie that is in any way painful to watch (wincing from the bad dialogue aside). But when the biggest moment of the film is recognizing that Ethan Hunt’s boss is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins (who is not credited as one of the film’s big stars), as opposed to any of the action sequences, it is hard to say one has a spy film that is successful in any way.

For other Mission: Impossible movies, check out my reviews of:
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible III
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

3/10

Check out how this movie stacks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page where the films are rated from best to worst!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Based On A Book?! For Edge Of Tomorrow, I Would Have Guessed A Video Game!

The Good: Good plot concept, Mostly decent special effects
The Bad: Goes for some cheap laughs over smart science fiction, No impressive performances, Light on character development
The Basics: Treading away from the nihilism of a protagonist who repeatedly dies, Edge Of Tomorrow takes a formulaic story of humans resisting alien invaders and adds a time-travel element that makes it seem a bit fresher than it actually is.


Summer Blockbuster Season has truly arrived. One knows it is undeniably here when the films start taking a turn for the big, impressive special effects films that have little resemblance to sensibility or compelling storylines. Last year, the film of this ilk right around this time was Pacific Rim (reviewed here!) and this year there is a film that mimics the feel and sense of style of that film: Edge Of Tomorrow. This weekend’s two big films were based on books and Edge Of Tomorrow is one viewers would likely never guess came from a novel (unlike The Fault In Our Stars). Most of Edge Of Tomorrow has the look and feel of watching a video game – a massive war/space invasion game – play out.

Edge Of Tomorrow is based upon a Japanese novel (All You Need Is Kill) and it is worth noting up front that I have never read the book, so this is a very pure review of the film alone. Edge Of Tomorrow is a big-budget science fiction film that utilizes a time loop, much like the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Cause And Effect” (reviewed here!) did over twenty years ago. The time travel conceit that dominates much of Edge Of Tomorrow is explained well-enough, but the sheer number of repetitions through the time line make the film feel increasingly tedious. For genre fans, the film is more monotonous than fresh and it is very much like watching a video game played out over and over again.

Five years after the Earth is first attacked by a powerful alien race called the Mimics, much of Europe has been decimated in the ensuing war. However, an international military force has finally developed a reasonable defense with their “New Jacket” technology. With the first waves of soldiers outfitted with New Jacket technology killing thousands of “mimics” in their first assault, there appears to be hope for humanity. Operation Downfall is publicized as the big offensive that might finally liberate humanity and its public face, Major William Cage is drafted, under threat of arrest, to participate in the ground assault on a beachfront in France. Unfortunately, during the battle, for which Cage is ill-trained and not ideally equipped, cage is killed by a giant Mimic whose blood melts his skull, killing him.

After rather vividly dying, Cage wakes up twenty-four hours earlier in the unit of grunts who are told by the Master Sergeant that he is a deserter, where he is despised, confused and mistrusted. As he goes into battle slightly better prepared, he realizes he is experiencing something more than just déjà vu. Instead, when he is killed again, he decides after his resurrection to try to learn more to attempt to survive the battle. Despite better training, Cage is continually killed until he meets up with superstar soldier Rita Vrataski in the battle and he saves her life. When he does, she informs him that he should find her when he wakes up and the next times through the timeline, he leaves the unit he awakens to to find Rita at a nearby training facility. Convincing her and Dr. Carter that he is reliving the battle each day, Rita informs him that she experienced the same thing when she encountered a special Mimic’s blood. Rita tasks Cage with a new mission: bypass Operation Downfall to find the Mimic hive entity and destroy it. After extensive training and dying many times in the attempt to get off the beach, Cage and Rita successfully survive one battle only to have Rita die horribly as the invasion spreads to London and the pair makes it to a farm house. After several permutations, Cage works to find the way to win the beach battle, survive the farm house encounter, and make it to the dam that is housing the horde of Mimics.

For a story with a painfully dull middle, director Doug Liman does the best he can to keep the flow going. Instead of constantly cutting back to the beginning of Cage’s sequence, Liman smartly moves the cuts to the relative points of diversion. So, for many of the times Cage dies, the film immediately cuts to how the sudden soldier manages to survive the same death. Conceptually, Edge Of Tomorrow is actually a surprisingly simple film, but it is a hard one to stretch out in a compelling way to make it visually interesting.

As a result, Edge Of Tomorrow oscillates between exceptional special effects battle sequences and long scenes of tedious exposition. The exposition is necessary at first to understand the mechanics of the film’s time-travel conceit, but as the film moves toward tracking down the Omega Mimic, how Cage has to continue to explain and convince his predicament to people becomes tiresome. By the time Cage meets with Brigham a second time, the viewer gets it and most will just want the film to get where it’s going. The execution of the idea is hardly as entertaining as the writers, producers, and director might hope.

Thus, much of the movie’s entertainment value comes in the “wow” factor from the special effects. The mimics move ridiculously fast and the metal-framed soldiers are an easy excuse for the digitized versions of the characters to move in ways that defy the otherwise real physics the film tries to maintain. The battles feel very much like a first person shooter or MMORPG war game, but when the film slows down to speeds that the effects can be appreciated, much of Edge Of Tomorrow is appropriately visually stunning.

On the character front, there is little in the way of actual development. Instead, characters come around to accepting the film’s plot conceit; they do not truly develop and evolve, they are merely persuaded.

As for the acting, Edge Of Tomorrow is led by Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. While both Cruise and Blunt plausibly interact with their virtual environments and entities, neither brings much to the role other than their ability to run around and use heavy firepower. Blunt is poor casting for a supersoldier, regardless of Rita’s dependence upon her exoskeleton. She is too waifish to believably be a solider who runs around, firing weapons and slashing oversized cleavers and many of the moments her character is put in mortal peril her expressions are stiff as opposed to professionally restrained. As for Tom Cruise, his role of Cage is virtually interchangeable with any number of his prior action hero roles where his character works hard to either enter a conflict of evade enemies. He is credible running around playing soldier, but he brings nothing to the role that viewers have not seen from him in many, many other Tom Cruise films. If anything, Cage is one of the least charismatic Cruise performances.

In the end, Edge Of Tomorrow is a largely unmemorable special effects-driven alien invasion film and one suspects it will have a long-term impact on par with Battle: Los Angles (reviewed here!), which is to say that while the film might make a splash now, it will be forgotten by the time it hits Blu-Ray and DVD.

For other works with Emily Blunt, please visit my reviews of:
Looper
The Five-Year Engagement
The Adjustment Bureau
Salmon Fishing In The Yemen
Charlie Wilson’s War
Dan In Real Life
The Devil Wears Prada

4/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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What Oblivion Did Right . . .

The Good: Decent development, No huge acting problems, Good character progression, Pacing, Special effects.
The Bad: Does not make some tech clear, Andrea Riseborough was utterly unimpressive.
The Basics: I might fall in the minority, but Oblivion holds up as an engaging science fiction film that takes its time to unfold in an intriguing and genuinely entertaining way.


I am still getting to know my mother-in-law. After five years, I am still learning who she is and after months of seeing preview trailers of Oblivion, my enthusiasm for watching the film was pretty much killed when my mother-in-law told my wife and I that she saw the film and thought it was “boring.” Well, hearing that pretty much kills momentum for me going out to spend money on a film. Having seen a number of trailers for Oblivion, my only perception before viewing the movie, now on DVD and Blu-Ray, was that the trailers revealed a bit much. Now, having seen Oblivion, my verdict is . . .

. . . Universal did something very right with the trailers for Oblivion and my mother-in-law and I do not share the same tastes!

To the discredit of the film, Oblivion’s trailer should never have included Morgan Freeman and it did reveal far too much (virtually anyone going into the film having seen the preview trailer will pretty quickly reason that the Scavengers who supposedly destroyed Earth are, in fact, humans. But beyond that, some awkward opening issues, and the performance by Andrea Riseborough (who might be the most blandly-presented female lead to meet the proportions of a Hollywood beautiful ideal - yes, I am aware she is British, though Oblivion is distinctly American), Oblivion has all the elements of a science fiction cult classic.

First, Oblivion is dense. This is a layered work that delights the engaged viewer by unfolding in a way that answers (almost) all of the questions in ways that are largely satisfying. In fact, the only question I had after watching the film was sensibly answered within the IMDB FAQ for the film and the answer made quite a bit of sense.

Second, the issues that viewers might have initially with the plot and set-up of Oblivion are addressed in-context in a way that makes a great deal of sense. At the outset of the film, the sensible viewer might ask why only two people are left to deal with the entirety of Earth’s security and power supply needs. That gets addressed. How a sentient computer system could make a mistake as tragic as the one that leaves the Tet vulnerable makes perfect sense given how the computer does not have a grasp on human emotions. In fact, outside Sally telling Victoria and Jack that they are responsible for defense moments before she retasks the drones for defense, the internal continuity in Oblivion is surprisingly good.

Oblivion opens on Earth, sixty years after a mass migration of humans from the decimated planet to Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. When Earth was attacked by the Scavengers and the moon was destroyed, humanity retreated to Titan. Victoria and Jack are an effective team of humans who are working in the safe zone to maintain giant generators and the robot drones that defend the generators. The generators are extracting water from what remains of Earth’s oceans to use as fuel on Titan and Jack performs his duties with on-the-job innovation (like repairing a drone using bubble gum he is chewing), though he has an insubordinate streak. Unlike Victoria, who acts as the liaison with the orbital control center, the Tet and Sally their Commander, Jack has an urge to remain on Earth and he has vague recollections of life on Earth and of a woman there.

When a mysterious signal originating near the boundaries of the irradiated zone sends an Earth ship crashing out of orbit and into Jack’s jurisdiction, everything changes for him. After Scavengers try to capture him while he is out on patrol, the crashed vessel leads Jack to rescue the woman, literally, of his dreams. In learning her mission and her connection to the Earth he was supposed to have forgotten, Jack comes to question the mission he is on and the entire evacuation from Earth. With the help of Julia – the woman rescued from the crashed ship – and Beech, a man Jack finds on Earth, all that Jack has been told begins to unravel and a disturbing truth reveals itself. As Jack reconciles the memories he is not supposed to have with the information provided by Julia and Beech, he must make the choice to fight for humanity or run away to the idyllic life he has long sought.

Tom Cruise gives a surprisingly good performance as Jack. This might be the best acting he has done since Magnolia (reviewed here!). He plays confused without making Jack seem stupid, he plays diligent with a minimal infusion of cocky. Cruise makes Jack seem like exactly who he should be given the circumstances. Cruise has good on-screen chemistry with Olga Kurylenko (Julia), so that makes their relationship viable.

While director Joseph Kosinski relies on one big special effects battle too many to make the pace more what audiences today expect, for the most part, Oblivion is smart and deliberate, building to the point it is trying to make. While it does not become as thoroughly mired in emotional introspection as, for example, Love (reviewed here!), Oblivion is smarter than the big-budget science fiction films that grace Summer Blockbuster Season.

That, if nothing else, makes Oblivion a must-watch and a worthwhile film to return to multiple times to appreciate the richness of what originally might appear to be a fatally flawed film.

For other science fiction films, please visit my reviews of:
Looper
The Matrix
Star Trek Into Darkness

8.5/10

For a complete, organized listing of my film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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One Iconic Scene Does Not Justify The Lackluster Spy Film Mission: Impossible

The Good: Smart protagonist, Generally good acting
The Bad: Special effects, Obvious plot reversals, No real character development, Dumb peripheral characters, Overbearing soundtrack
The Basics: When Ethan Hunt’s team is burned, he learns there is a conspiracy within the Impossible Missions Force and he is the prime suspect.


With so many reviewers going gaga for James Bond in celebration of his 50th Anniversary and the accompanying Blu-Ray/DVD collection for that milestone, I thought, “Now’s the perfect time for me to review Mission: Impossible.” What can I say? I’m a contrarian at heart. Actually, I have a thing about having sensibility in my reviews and I vaguely recalled seeing Mission: Impossible III (reviewed here!) and being disappointed by how derivative of Alias (reviewed here!) it was. Conversely, I enjoyed last year’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (reviewed here!), so I thought it was time to go back and see the first Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible film.

I am not impressed. Within the film and as a professional reviewer, there were too many conceits utilized by Mission: Impossible that made it problematic at best. As a viewer who understands how Hollywood works (at least in general terms) the fact that the film opens with a shot of Emilio Estevez, whose name does not appear in the opening credits, is a disturbing nod that informs the viewer they should not get overly attached to his character. In the film itself, Mission: Impossible features one of the dumbest criminal masterminds of all time in that the “diabolical genius” who is behind the film’s conspiracy (which he has apparently been planning for some time) stupidly tells the truth at key moments which allow the protagonist to easily reason who is behind everything. Obviously, if one is a mole in a government agency, they should be used to lying and working covertly. The villain in Mission: Impossible does so so poorly that it is hard to believe that the person gets as far as they do.

Following a mission in Kiev, Jim Phelps assembles an Impossible Missions Force Team in Prague. With the stated mission being to recover a disc that has the aliases and mundane names of every IMF operative working in Eastern Europe, Phelps’s team, which includes Ethan Hunt, Claire Phelps, Sarah, Jack and another operative, infiltrates a party. The mission, however, goes sour and everyone but Hunt appears killed. Contacting command, Hunt is put in contact with Kittridge, who happens to be in Prague and is able to extract Hunt. Meeting with him, Kittridge reveals that there is a mole in the IMF and because Hunt’s family farm has suddenly come out of debt, he is the prime suspect.

Evading Kittridge’s men, Hunt makes it to a safe house, where he attempts to find the people who gave the IMF the mission and he discovers Claire is still alive. Claire and Hunt assemble their own team of former IMF agents to get the list which was used as bait to draw out the real mole. As Kittridge closes in on his team, Hunt learns the identity and motivations of the enemies of the IMF.

To the credit of Mission: Impossible, Ethan Hunt is characterized as a realistically smart protagonist. He asks – immediately – one of the key questions of Kittridge when he learns that the other agent is in Prague. Hunt is operating on a level that makes him seem like a credible, realistically-seasoned spy. He might not be a good son (why would he let his family farm stay in debt if he had such a good job?!), but he is a realistically competent spy protagonist.

The acting in Mission: Impossible is fair. Tom Cruise is credible, if young looking, for a superspy action hero Ethan Hunt. On the character front, Ethan Hunt and his family ties make less sense for a spy of his caliber (obvious weakness), but Cruise gets into the role after the opening meeting scene (in that, none of the performers seem to be taking the briefing seriously enough to be actual intelligence agents. The scene is fun, but not at all believable). The only other truly credible actors in Mission: Impossible are Emilio Estavez and Ving Rhames. Jean Reno, who can usually be counted on for a great performance, plays Krieger as clumsy at a moment when the character cannot afford to be and he does not sell the moment. Similarly, Emmanuelle Beart, who plays Claire, is a pretty generic pouty-lipped, Hollywood ideal who has no presence or gravitas on the screen. Henry Czerny, at least, has the excuse that he isn’t given much to do with Kittridge as a generic antagonist.

Several of the shots in Mission: Impossible do not work in a rational sense. Coming off the iconic scene in the record’s room, Ethan Hunt catches a bead of his own sweat to prevent it from setting off the alarm. The shot looks marginally good, but it is so obviously an insert shot that it is distracting to the seasoned viewer. In other words, there is no way the hand could be at the angle and placement it is shot in, especially catching the sweat, in the reality of Hunt’s body position in the shot. In fact, the movement needed to make it work would have caused the suspended character to pinwheel.

Director Brian De Palma sacrifices rationality for the cool look in several key moments. The finale of the film involves Ethan Hunt laying inches away from a helicopter blade and he looks mildly startled. That helicopter blade should have been exceptionally hot; regardless of it missing slicing open Hunt’s neck, he should be pretty uncomfortable from the heat. De Palma hopes the viewer will not notice this. Furthermore, he uses an incredible reliance on the soundtrack to telegraph the emotions and tension the viewer is supposed to feel.

They do not.

As well, De Palma makes several obvious cuts - most obviously with Jack's demise - where he is obviously laboring to keep the film PG-13 and it looks and feels sloppy at those moments.  The result is a spy film that strives to be even average, but is so preoccupied with creating the next “surprise” twist that the viewer is left bored for much of the movie.

For other spy thrillers, check out my reviews of:
Skyfall
The Bourne Identity
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

3/10

Check out how this film stacks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Is Britain For Me? Not If The Dull The Queen Is Any Indication!

The Good: Acting
The Bad: Lack of compelling plot, Dull characters, Pacing is deathly slow
The Basics: Dull, plodding along and essentially British, The Queen has inspired performances but little else, including a lack of entertainment or educational value.


Every now and then I have a feeling I am watching a film that is too soon, too specific and too weird for my comprehension in relation to the rest of the world. When The Queen began to get rave reviews by almost every critic I could find, I began to wonder what was so great about the movie. All I knew about it was that the film was about Queen Elizabeth (II, the current one) and how she reacted to the death of Princess Diana when Di was killed in the late '90s in a car accident as a result of being chased by the paparazzi. Sadly, the plot is grossly overstated in such a phrasing.

Shortly after Tony Blair is elected Prime Minister of England and assumes the reins of government, he finds himself deeply intertwined with the royal family when Princess Diana abruptly dies in a car accident. Blair begins to express his sorrow for the nation's loss while the Queen remains publicly silent on the issue. The Queen decides that the grief the family feels ought to be kept private and that because Princess Diana no longer was a royal (following her divorce from Charles), she was not entitled to royal treatment and/or burial. While Blair and Prince Charles try to convince her to adapt to changing times, the Queen spends a week debating whether or not to address the public about the death of Diana.

The entire plot is the belaboring of a decision and as an American, it's terribly hard to see the appeal of a film where someone takes a week to make up their mind as to whether to speak or not. Already I envision the next Morgan/Frears hit wherein the Queen Mother spends a week deciding whether or not to eat a cookie. As cruel as it may sound, the belaboring of the decision feels analogous in The Queen. The Queen is clinging to tradition and the reticence that is befitting her post. I can dig that as a character aspect, but making a movie over people's reaction to grief seems dull and cheesy for a real-life event so close to it (and timed so appropriately to the descent of Tony Blair).

The reticence of the Queen makes the British people begin once again to doubt the necessity of the monarchy and, again, as an American, I find the whole debate pointless and silly. Even more unfortunate in both reality and in the film is the way decisions are all absolutes. I'm going to ignore reality from here on out (this is a historical fiction/drama, more than a documentary and simply by the way some of the scenes are filmed there are obvious extrapolations) and simply focus on the film, so when I talk about characters, live with it, please. The characters in The Queen are caught in ridiculous dialectics where everything is framed in black and white and the damage this does to the story is extensive.

The Queen is obsessed with maintaining tradition and the badge of office. Tony Blair is concerned with keeping the citizenry on his side and he savvily observes their moods and understands their need to express their grief. But the movie soon degenerates into ridiculous and pointless debates about protocol and the belaboring making a decision. Blair counsels the Queen to speak to the British people, she resists.

I suppose to the British, this sort of thing is important, but I tend to live with the idea that I do not need others to tell me how to feel (or suggest how I ought to cope). As a result, the hours it takes in real time and the days it takes cinematically for this decision to be made feels like a waste of time.

But then there's the real problem; the Queen goes through this immense and pointless debate for one reason: she is clinging to tradition and as such seeks to maintain the power of the throne. Why then does she eventually capitulate on all fronts? The people want a flag flown at half-mast above the palace; the flag is only flown when the royals are home. As a result, when they go on holiday in the country, there's no flag flown. Even if the Queen capitulates to appearing before the British people, why doesn't she just explain, "This is how the flag works. Live with it." Instead, the whole debate becomes pointless when what she seeks to protect through her reticence is gutted by her complete capitulation.

No wonder the British lost respect for their monarch.

The purpose of debating the entire lack of plot of The Queen is that the film is plot-heavy with no plot (decision belabored; that's what the movie is about) and to illustrate the fact that The Queen is not entertaining. It's not terribly enlightening; I could have read a magazine article, a newspaper article, or a one-paragraph blog that would have told me all of the key information presented in this film and lost nothing and saved a couple of hours.

But then, I would not have had the crazy-boring British experience.

I also would not have been able to watch Helen Mirren perform. Mirren plays The Queen and her performance outshines the character. I had recently seen Mirren in The Clearing (reviewed here!) and Painted Lady (reviewed here!) and what impressed me about this movie was that her portrayal of the Queen was so dramatically different from her performance in either other movie that it astonished me to think she was the same actress. If one must watch a woman working to make a decision on screen for a couple of hours, this would seem to be the actress to do it.

The real winner is actor Michael Sheen who plays Tony Blair and who holds his own opposite Mirren. In all honesty, all of the fuss over Mirren as the Queen led to a neglect of Sheen. I've seen a great deal of footage of Blair and Sheen has him pegged. He looks like him (enough), sounds like him and carries himself with the same posture and self-assured body language. The movie makes Blair out as the reasonable hero and Sheen embodies that perfectly. Sheen is so good in this that he redeems himself for appearing in Underworld (reviewed here!).

On DVD, there was a commentary track and previews (sorry, I cannot say how decent the commentary was as I was so bored with the movie that I wasn't about to rewatch it to hear British people blather on more about it). The packaging is nice, though.

In all, though, The Queen benefited from the hype that surrounded it, but it ends up as a film that has great actors playing marginal characters in a situation so dull as to make it difficult to believe it was put on screen. It certainly did not deserve to be nominated for Best Picture; fortunately, it did not win.

For other works with Helen Mirren, check out my reviews of:
Glee - Season 3
Inkheart
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
Gosford Park

4/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Mars Attacks: The Not-Exactly-Tough-Call On Spielberg's Magnum Blah.

The Good: Decent enough acting, General plot is cool
The Bad: Characters don't pop, Confused details, Mediocre use of best actors, Problematic specific plot
The Basics: When martians invade, Tom Cruise proves he can act like a jerk and the audience finds themselves left with special effects movie that does not add up.


I have to give some credit to anyone who tries to remake something that has been made in at least three formats and tries to put their own touch on something that is essentially already ingrained in the American collective unconscious. That said, Steven Spielberg's stab at War Of The Worlds fails to recreate the experience of the alien invasion hoax perpetrated on the radio, the intrigue of H.G. Well's novel or even add something extraordinary and new. Instead, in his attempt to visualize an alien invasion from Martians, Spielberg and his writing staff create a jumble of images tied together by unlikable characters and mediocre acting.

Ray Ferrier, day laborer and weekend father of two, has his children for the weekend. Lucky him. Instead of having a great time together, Ray, Robbie and Rachel (yes, the names in the movie are that bad) end up on the forefront of an extraterrestrial invasion. Giant tripods rise from the earth bearing martians bent on blowing up everything in their path. And that just so happens to be the Ferrier family as they flee from the New York City area toward Boston. The martians are everywhere, blowing everything up.

Or capturing people.

Or bothering to look into basements.

Or creating some sort of larger biological organism over apparently random surfaces.

It's not quite clear. The best potential strength of War Of The Worlds (which is more accurately titled "Humans Getting Their Asses Kicked By Invading Martians") is also its greatest weakness. Ray Ferrier and his family are pretty much common folks. An alien invasion from their perspective has the potential to be interesting. They aren't scientists, they aren't military. So whatever they experience, they are clueless as to the motives, biology or methods of the alien invaders. That's a cool idea, as far as I'm concerned.

The problem is, we are left wondering about a lot of key aspects of important concepts in the movie. So, we hear a lot of theories in War Of The Worlds and it is pretty well established that the martians deposited their tripods on Earth underground some time ago (a reasonable estimate would be at least 600 years ago, as there are several under the New York City area that would have been pretty hard to disguise dropping off once the city was there) but we have no real idea when. Some characters theorize they've been underground for millions of years, which seems silly. After all, the further back the plans for alien conquest go, the more ridiculous the waiting period becomes (i.e. it's much easier to conquer cavemen than it is to enslave 21rst Century folk).

Spielberg, unfortunately, deals with the problem of perspective by simply adding a great number of levels to the invading force. This is problematic because they are contradictory and confusing, not from a perspective sense but from a basic storytelling concept. So, for example, when we first see the martians, they are microwaving every person in their path. Okay, the viewer is meant to understand they are hostile and are out to destroy all human life. We can live with this. Near the end of the movie, however, humans are being captured and liquefied by the martians for either power source, food or to create the strange biological mass that is growing all around places the martians have effectively cleared out. The martians have pretty sophisticated shielding, so unless they are even more wasteful than humans, this weird development near the end seems like it ought to have happened right away. Unless, of course, one is simply making a movie with special effects and assumes the audience has no reasoning skills or desire to understand what the movie is actually about.

The secondary problem with this type of perspective is that when we are following ordinary people, one would expect them to have pretty ordinary experiences, even in the midst of an alien invasion. In this incarnation of War Of The Worlds, Ray Ferrier and family are the ordinary people who happen to be in all the right places at the right time to learn about the invaders, witness all the phases, provide information and help do their part to repel the aliens. It's silly. Dreamcatcher (reviewed here!) had the potential to explore this perspective better, as did Signs (reviewed here!). I've yet to see a film where the common person dealing with the invasion is explored effectively and realistically.

The tragedy here is that Spielberg had the chance to truly nail it with his attempt. With War Of The Worlds, most all viewers already know how it ends. The magic of this particular story is that because (essentially) random chance foils the martians, we don't need our protagonist to be a hero or even remotely heroic. We don't even need our protagonist to survive necessarily.

Spielberg seemed to realize this in part by having us follow a fairly unlikable protagonist. Ray Ferrier is portrayed as a jerk. He's not terribly into his children or his job and his initial characterization could have worked wonderfully, had it only stuck. Instead, Spielberg's obsession with heroes comes into play and most of Ray's negative qualities are sublimated for the chance to contribute and be heroic, even if in minor ways.

Far more interesting is his daughter, Rachel. The story would have been the ultimate in creepy and intriguing had Ray been killed early in the movie, leaving poor Rachel to fend for herself. Instead, Rachel is dragged along as a character foil for Ray, not developing a character, delivering the few clever lines of the movie, and mostly relegated to standing in the background screaming.

Rachel is played by Dakota Fanning, who I've oft cited as one of the few talents evident already in the next generation of actresses. War Of The Worlds wastes the considerable talents of the girl who blew audiences away in I Am Sam. Fanning is condemned to a role of screaming and not doing much other than that. She does it well, though.

The lead, Ray, is played by Tom Cruise and I suppose he is acting well in War Of The Worlds. His character is unlikable and he comes across as ultimately unlikable. He's a jerk. Cruise plays that well.

It's not enough to recommend the movie, though. This incarnation of War Of The Worlds takes on just a little too much to keep us with such improbable protagonists (the last portion of the movie, where Ray and Rachel are hiding out in a survivalist's basement just does not fit) and there are a lot of editing decisions that are noticeable and awkward. There are cuts while Ray is driving, for example, that simply aren't timed right making the visual impression of the film more sloppy than chaotic.

For other alien invasion films, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Alien Trespass
Battleship
Battlefield Earth

5.5/10

For other film reviews, check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Mission: Impossible III - How Bad Can Action-Adventure Films Be When J.J. Abrams Is Involved?

The Good: One or two moments of direction, writing and insinuation of character
The Bad: Predictable for fans of J.J. Abrams, Generally terrible acting, Surprisingly bad plot
The Basics: In a mindless action-adventure flick filled with shooting, running, jumping and the requisite number of explosions, Mission: Impossible III breaks J.J. Abrams successful streak.


I vaguely recall seeing the first Mission: Impossible movie with Tom Cruise, though it left such a little impression in my mind I could not tell anyone what happened in it. I know I did not see Mission: Impossible 2, but last weekend I found myself sitting down and watching Mission: Impossible III after thoroughly enjoying Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (reviewed here!). I had trepidation about the film, despite the fact that it was directed by J.J. Abrams, who has a lot of street credibility with my for his work creating Alias. Sadly, Abrams and his Alias alums co-writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci present nothing terribly new with Mission: Impossible III, making one think they had some decent ideas for spy dramas, but shot their wad on Alias.

When Ethan Hunt, superspy from the Impossible Missions Force is called back from his civilian life with his new fiance, Julia, when an agent he trained is captured by a pretty generic villainous billionaire named Owen Davian. When Hunt and his team lose Agent Farris, they go after Davian directly, only to lose him in a big, bad breakout. While Hunt goes rogue, fearing one of the higher-ups at IMF is in league with Davian, he works for find Julia and rescue her before she suffers the same fate as Farris.

Mission: Impossible III is so like an Alias episode that it even follows the narrative structure of the pilot episode of Abram's breakout hit. Just as Sydney Bristow began her tenure on television strapped to a chair as part of a narrative flash-forward, so too does this film begin with Ethan Hunt. As Davian interrogates Hunt brutally, Hunt begs for Julia's life. And it might have been compelling . . . had we not already seen it before.

The film then flashes back to the events leading Hunt to the chair and Davian's angry threats. As fans of J.J. Abrams's work will note, there is an obligatory cameo by actor Greg Grunberg and agent Farris is played by Keri Russell of Felicity fame, which Abrams also created. The result here is less a distinctive action-adventure movie or even a Mission: Impossible movie and more an homage to the work of J.J. Abrams. This is like "Greatest Hits of J.J. Abrams with a guest cast from Mission: Impossible."

The problem, outside this being entirely derivative, Mission: Impossible III has almost nothing going on in the character department. While Abrams belabored the balance between Sydney Bristow's home and work lives to establish interesting protagonists on Alias, he does little of that with Ethan Hunt here. Sure, we are spoon-fed the relationship between Ethan Hunt and Julia, but the relationship seems forced, with Hunt emoting more deeply for Agent Farris than for his potential wife.

Moreover, Owen Davian is a terribly generic villain. He is hunting for the rabbit's foot, a mysterious device with a biohazard warning that is not revealed to the audience. Davian has a pretty impressive arsenal at his disposal which is supposed to make the engaged viewer ask "If he has all this stuff, what must the rabbit's foot be that is so impressive and important to go through all of this for?" Sadly, this viewer - who struggled to stay engaged with this fairly mindless action adventure flick - just felt that he was going through a lot of bother for nothing that he couldn't have gotten a number of other, much easier, ways.

Mission: Impossible III is notable in one aspect and that is that it defies the current cultural trend that seems to want to convince the world that torture works. On 24 and in the camps of the U.S. government in neutral territory, torture is justified as a necessary evil in the supposed War on Terror. The assumption here - disproven ages ago - is that torture works. In a wonderful episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled "Chains of Command, Part II" (reviewed here!) the point is brilliantly brought home by Captain Picard that torture is historically known to be unreliable and more degrading to the interests of the torturer than the tortured. Similarly, Mission: Impossible III honorable illustrates the futility of torture when Davian is hung out a plane by Hunt without divulging anything. Similarly, the circumstance at the opening of the film does not yield what Davian hopes it would from Hunt. That's worth the bump up from one star in my book.

Sadly, it's one of the few concessions I feel I can make. Most of Mission: Impossible III is mindless running, shooting and blowing things up. One of my favorite - tongue is very much in cheek here - moments is when the special effects overcome all reason and the explosion of a missile behind Hunt throws him violently to the right. Physics, apparently, does not apply to the special effects department for this movie.

Neither does simple reason. The audience is expected to believe that a rescue attempt involving a drone plane firing missiles and a helicopter is pulled off in . . . wait for it . . . Washington D.C. Of all of the cities on Earth, Washington, D.C. was chosen as the location that the IMF forces are assaulted for Davian's rescue. There's suspension of disbelief and then there's just utter stupidity and this certainly falls into the latter category. Who would honestly believe that in these tumultuous years following the September 11, 2001 attacks that anything could shoot off missiles over D.C. and get away without being hunted down and/or blown out of the sky immediately?

I don't.

Equally unconvincing is the acting throughout Mission: Impossible III. Greg Grunberg's cameo to look somewhat bored is quite possibly the peak of the acting here, though Keri Russell makes the most of her time on screen by creating Farris as someone distinctly different from her trademark character from Felicity. She looks different, moves different and does her best to be the action hero she is supposed to be and she pulls it off as well as the script will allow her.

The acting talent of Ving Rhames is wasted in the bit role of Luther, though I understand he's part of the franchise so he was probably just happy to be back. Similarly, Laurence Fishburne's sole moment of acting greatness as Theodore Brassel, head of IMF, is entirely scripted when he makes the distinction between the Ellison and Wells's "Invisible Man."

This means that much of the movie hinges on the acting of leads Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Hoffman illustrates none of the nervous mannerisms that made him a hit in Capote. The sad thing is, as a fan of Hoffman's work, it is hard to say Davian is a stretch for this great actor. In fact, watching the movie, I felt I had seen Hoffman acting exactly as he was in this film and I finally placed it. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is simply reprising his role and performance from the vastly superior Punch-Drunk Love, where he played a similar adversary (though with remarkably less money). It's not that Hoffman's performance is not good, it's just that the viewer has seen it before if they have followed his career at all.

Tom Cruise is equally bland, if not worse as Ethan Hunt. He runs, he jumps, sure, but he does not emote. He does nothing to make the viewer believe in his abilities or care about his predicament. His acting here is virtually interchangeable with his performance in, say, War Of The Worlds. Cruise does nothing stellar and, even worse, nothing interesting. As the central protagonist, it is death on toast that the viewer is not sold by his performance.

Mission: Impossible III is ideal for Mystery Science Theater style viewing, but not much else. It is certainly not inspired enough to warrant buying or watching with any amount of seriousness. And as a fan of the works of J.J. Abrams, it honestly pains me to write that.

For other works by J.J. Abrams, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Fringe - Season 2
Fringe - Season 1
Star Trek
Lost

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Tom Cruise Takes On The Nazis Adequately In Valkyrie, A Good (Not Great) Film.

The Good: Great pacing, Interesting plot, Generally good acting
The Bad: Light on character, Obviously somewhat predictable.
The Basics: In Valkyrie, a group of German officers attempt to thwart the Nazis in a tight, but slightly above average film.


There's an irony to my take on Valkyrie, which is this: before I went into the screening of the film, I actually allowed myself to get excited about it because from all of the trailers, it looked like it wouldn't be a Holocaust downer movie. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Holocaust denier (I deny that the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews is the ONLY holocaust), but sometimes I'm in a mood for a Holocaust depressing movie and sometimes I'm in the mood to see a war movie, especially one where the Nazis get what's coming to them. I'm not so keen on mixing them sometimes. The irony here is that when I finished watching Valkyrie, my overwhelming thought was, "That movie would have worked a lot better if the characters had a reason - on screen - for what they were doing; they should have shown some of them having an epiphany at a concentration camp!" I suppose we can't have it all, but with Valkyrie, concentration camps are mentioned in passing and given how little emotional resonance most of the characters have, it would have been decent to see the motivation one of them actually had.

That said, Valkyrie is a surprisingly good film. It's good, not great, not the holiday knock-your-socks-off must-see movie, but it's good. In other words, it's not a Schindler's List or Glory, but it is decent and worth a viewing, if not quite a buy on DVD when it is eventually released. And right up top, I have to give kudos to whomever made the trailers for Valkyrie; I thought this would be yet another film where the trailer showed us everything (especially when over half the trailer's lines are in the first five minutes of the movie!) but there is a LOT of movie outside the trailer and it worked very well in that regard.

Stationed in Tunisia, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is a dissenter in the German military who concocts a withdrawal plan from Africa based upon a lack of water rations. Unfortunately, before the appropriate orders can be given, the Allies sweep into Tunisia and shoot up his Division. Stauffenberg loses an eye, a hand and fingers off his left hand. He also gets shipped back to Berlin as a result of his injuries. Once there, he is reunited with his wife and taken in by General Olbricht and Ludwig Beck, a high officer who now is more politically connected than connected to the military. Beck and Olbricht are part of the high echelon of military officers who refused promotion to get closer to Adolf Hitler's inner circle. They want to take Germany back from the people and away from the Nazis.

During a bombing of Berlin, Stauffenberg hatches a plan: rewriting one of Adolf Hitler's secret orders to put the civilian reserve army under Stauffenberg and other dissenter's control. Operation Valkyrie is an order that would mobilize Hitler's reserve army in the event of a coup and Stauffenberg and his associates hatch a plan: kill Hitler, frame the S.S., mobilize the reserve army under a sympathetic general and have them arrest the S.S. and turn control over to a new Chancellor who is part of their inner circle. The plan comes fraught with two essential dangers: Hitler has to sign the revised Valkyrie order, which Stauffenberg is suddenly promoted to a position to get, and Hitler has to be successfully assassinated and a sympathetic general has to head the reserve army in order for it to work. And as Beck notes, "Nothing ever goes according to plan . . ."

Valkyrie is, admittedly, much better than I thought it would be. Had I known it was by Bryan Singer, I don't think I would have doubted as much going in. Singer re-teams with writer Christopher McQuarrie, a team that made the genius The Usual Suspects. Together they tell and show a story that is remarkably well paced. Valkyrie is a two-hour film and I swear, it felt like an hour. It is a remarkably direct movie and it moves along at a very regular and quick pace. That works very well for the movie.

Some - on other places I've looked - seem to be criticizing the accents in Valkyrie and I think it's worth noting that McQuarrie and Singer manage to address that in a very clever fashion in the opening moments of the movie. There are - essentially - three types of movies that are historical and set in foreign nations: 1. Presented in the native language (usually subtitled), 2. "Assumed Translations" where everyone speaks in an accent that mimics as closely as they can that of the time and place in the language the audience understands (which requires all of the actors to use the same accent and is also most open to criticism), and 3. Assumed Native presentation where the characters are speaking in the language the audience understands, but the audience has to imagine that they are actually speaking in their native language. Valkyrie is presented as the third option and that is set up by the very opening where Tom Cruise as Stauffenberg opens in narrating in German and overlays with English until he is just speaking in English. This works perfectly; we get it. Cruise is not held to any sort of accent (nor is anyone else) because the character isn't speaking English, the character is speaking in German, it's just convenient that we, the audience, are hearing it in English. Any commentary on accents, then, is missing the point of the opening two minutes of the movie.

And Valkyrie is generally well-executed in terms of plot. The references to Schindler's List and Glory before were purposeful; we know where the plot is going and even without knowing the specifics of the historical July 20th Attempt, the audience has to know not to get too attached to any of the characters because, in the end, this is not how the war ended for Germany. What Valkyrie lacks that Glory and Schindler's List had, though, is the character elements to sustain our interest and make us care. Don't get me wrong, there are characters who pop up and as the movie progresses, the viewer thinks, "Man, it's too bad that guy's gonna die, I actually like him" but for the most part, the characters are flat and presented as monolithic as opposed to actually fleshed out.

Stauffenberg opens Valkyrie as a dissenter in the military, part of the African Offensive because of his views on how the war is being managed. How he came to this conclusion and why he was sent into quasi-exile as opposed to killed by the Reich, is never adequately explained. All of the officers presented are given a vague, nationalistic sense that they are acting to thwart the Nazis out of some concept that not all Germans are Nazis and they owe it to the people and the world to do what they can to stop Hitler and his plans for world domination. But not one of the characters has any sort of story that explains how they came to that point. Most problematic of these is Stauffenberg's adjutant, Werner von Haeften, who enters the film ready to commit high treason and is never given any explanation for his willingness to jump off this particular cliff.

Valkyrie is also hampered both by reality and its own subtext. In reality, some officials were Nazis, some weren't and the historical accuracy people would be up in arms if those who weren't helping Stauffenberg out did in the film or vice versa. For my part, I crack up when the movie opens with "This story is based upon historical events" and closes the credits with "any similarity between persons or situations, past or present is entirely coincidental." The problematic in Valkyrie is that some of the characters speak in subtext and for those of us looking for clandestine communications, two of them shine like a flare.

The first is when Major-General Henning von Tresckow's bottle bomb attempt on Hitler's life in the beginning goes awry, he recovers the bottle from an officer who suspects, but does not report the incident. That officer speaks in a way - specifically mentioning about the subversives (who he is in charge of rounding up) "You'd be surprised" who they are - that seems to indicate that under the right conditions, he'd be on the side of the dissenters, but he never comes over, making one wonder what the point of the subtext is. Even worse it the insinuations in regard to General Fromm. Fromm specifically says that he is a loyal officer so long as Hitler is alive and in power. When the operation begins, though, he is given the opportunity to join the rebels, but is arrested instead. If the producers ran into historical accuracy problems here, one wonders why they included the sympathizer subtext at all.

Even as the characters are flat, the acting is what I call "mediocre greatness." Director Bryan Singer stacks the deck with great casting, but most of the roles simply require the actors to walk around in German military outfits looking serious. They do this. This is, essentially, what I observed with Mystic River where a director assembles an amazing cast and then simply uses the cast within their expected levels of greatness based upon their known caliber of acting. In other words, there are few truly genius moments of acting in Valkyrie, it's mostly that a bunch of great actors show up.

So, for example, Kenneth Branagh shows up in the beginning of the movie and plays an officer who has his moment and Branagh is fine, but it's not one of his greatest performances of all time. Similarly, I expect greatness from Tom Wilkinson, who plays General Fromm. Wilkinson shows up, acts exactly as good as I would expect from him, but it's not an astonishing performance for him. The only primary actor who pushed the envelope of my expectations was Bill Nighy. Nighy plays General Olbricht and there is not a hint of humor in his performance. I don't think he smiles the entire film. Nighy is convincingly stern and there is a moment when Olbricht freezes up that Nighy is absolutely genius in his portrayal.

Tom Cruise is stiff as Stauffenberg, does not have any honest chemistry with on-screen wife Carice von Houten and does not surprise the viewer with his performance. Yes, it's average and expected Tom Cruise.

The one performance that blew me away, though was Eddie Izzard. Izzard is granted a bit role as a communications General at the Wolf's Hut (Hitler's private war council bunker) and anyone who has seen Dress To Kill will be astonished by how serious and intense Izzard can be. He may only have two or three scenes, but he steals them and illustrates he has some serious dramatic chops!

On DVD, Valkyrie appears with remarkably standard DVD bonus features. There is a commentary track wherein Cruise, McQuarrie and Singer all attempt to emphasize that Nazis were bad, but not all Germans were Nazis, so it's okay to root for the film's protagonists. As well, there is a historical documentary and a featurette on making the film. These are good enough to keep the film worth watching.

And in the end, Valkyrie is an engaging political espionage story that works. But it's not one of the year's best films that some have been holding out hoping it would be. Then again, if it gets you out of the house around the holidays . . .

For other works with Bill Nighy, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
G-Force
Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Underworld
Love Actually

7/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Index Page!

© 2012, 2009, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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