Mission: Impossible - Fallout

First Hit: Holds tension and action throughout, however it is long and we all know the ending.

I’ve said this many a time, what I like about Tom Cruise (here as IMF Agent Ethan Hunt) is that he’s always all in for the characters he chooses. As Ethan Hunt he’s one with the role. What is always disappointing is that we always know how the film is going to end. For instance, my previous review of the film Blindspotting, I had no idea how the movie would end, that’s what partly made it great. Watching Mission, I know that Hunt is going to save the day in the nick of time and he doesn't fail.

Despite that, this film is action packed from the very beginning and creates tension by delivering on some hair-raising predicaments and stunts. One of the nice touches was how the film began. Playing the Mission: Impossible theme music, it showed brief pictures of was to come, just like the television show use to do. The cast is solid, especially Hunts team of Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benjamin “Benji” Dunn (Simon Pegg). Their chemistry of working together on previous Mission films makes the impossible missions more possible and believable to the audience – they are pros.

The plot has Hunt attempting to obtain three plutonium devices that are on the black market. The US Government want to keep them out of the hands of terrorists. Hunt makes the choice to save the life of Luther over obtaining the devices.

Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), who Hunt previously captured and put into prison, is attempting to obtain the devices through surrogates. He wants to use the devices to make a point that the world must suffer greatly if it is to get better. His former organization, The Apostles, want the weapons as well.

One of the plot devices is to have CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) join the team to protect the CIA’s interest in IMF’s plot to re-obtain the devices. Walker is directly under CIA Director Erica Stone (Angela Bassett). The twist is that Walker is also playing John Lark who is an enemy of the CIA and IMF.

Hunt and his team are under the direction of former CIA Director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) who now leads the IMF task force. The film shows the tension between the CIA and IMF because the CIA doubts that the IMF can get the job done.

Another twist to this plot is the MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who has to redeem herself to her organization, therefore she must also obtain the plutonium devices.

Lastly, trying to broker a sale of the devices the story has the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby). I'm not totally sure why this part was needed but it worked.

What the film has is a number of different groups trying to get control of;  the plutonium, a captured prisoner, or Hunt.

There are plenty of gun battle scenes, lots of chases (cars, motorcycles, running, and helicopter), and plenty of costume changes that the Mission: Impossible team is noted for. Everything is done very well, and the cliff hanging scene is simply a great cliffhanger. Lastly, one of the highlights for me was the different ways the theme song was used throughout the film.

Cruise always puts everything into his action roles. He can be funny, self-effacing, and believable all at the same time. Cavill is good as the agent with dual identity. Rhames is fantastic as part of the IMF team. He shows smarts, affability, and is fully believable in his role. Pegg is spot on as the one always questioning whether a plan Hunt has devised will work or not. In the end, he does his part and is often the one who figures things out. Ferguson is excellent as one of two women Hunt admires and loves. As an agent of MI6 she’s excellent. Harris is good as the slightly off-base mastermind who wants to teach the world a lesson or two. Bassett is good as the CIA Director that is elusive about her commitment to the IMF team. Baldwin was very good as Hunt’s immediate boss. Kirby was good as the White Widow, but I found it difficult to buy into why she held so much sway. Michelle Monaghan was excellent as Hunt’s former wife who is in jeopardy at the end of the film. Christopher McQuarrie wrote and directed this adventure with complete idea of what he wanted and with a knowing how to build tension to the end.

Overall: This was a fun filled film although it was a bit long.

Patriots Day

First Hit:  This was an interesting perspective of a very tragic event in Boston and America’s history.

This dramatization of a horrific event was both; interesting from a historical perspective and not very engaging from a character standpoint. The film took a very broad perspective of the people to be included as characters. It included the various law enforcement agencies including; the Boston Police Department, the FBI, Watertown Police Department, MIT Police Department and a couple of other US Government agencies. From a citizen perspective, there were both students and citizens from various neighborhoods.

The filmmakers made attempts to provide backstories, or history per se, of certain characters, however despite being helpful at a small level it was difficult to engage with anyone at an emotional level. For example; Police Officer Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) was the lead character and we learn early on he’s got a history with the department and is on probation. Why? We never really find out but there are multiple references to alcohol and there are a couple scenes where he drinks when it might have been better if he didn’t.

But this isn’t the story, but it nagged at me that we didn’t have this history. The story is about how Boston and others captured the brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze respectively), who become radicalized Muslim bombers and exploded two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

The film tries to track a lot of people including: the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan’s wife Katherine Russell (Melissa Benoist), Officer Saunders, bomb injured married couple Patrick Downes (Christopher O’Shea) and Jessica Kensky (Rachel Brosnahan), MIT Officer Sean Collier (Jake Picking), car jacked Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang), Boston Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman), Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (Vincent Curatola), FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffery Pugliese (J. K. Simmons), Carol Saunders (Michelle Monaghan), Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Michael Beach), and a host of others. It begins the evening before the bombing and goes to when they were captured (Dzhokhar) and killed (Tamerlan). One thing that was interesting was that this film had one of the largest credited and uncredited casts for any film in recent memory.

The filmmakers used some archival footage as well as re-enacted scenes in following the brothers, law enforcement, and citizens over subsequent week as the brothers tried to escape, go to New York to place another bomb, and how they were captured through the use of technology, law enforcement officers, and the bravery of citizens.

Wahlberg was very good as the film’s key focal point. I wanted to know more of why he was being punished, but from a character point of view he was very strong. Wolff and Melikidze were both very solid as the brothers who brought this havoc to Boston. I think they did a great job of emoting the attitude as affected Muslim radicals. Bacon was wonderful as the FBI agent trying to get the bombers identified and captured quickly. O’Shea and Brosnahan were wonderful as the married couple that lost limbs, survived, and made it back to a subsequent race. Yang was really good as the young man whose car was hijacked by the brothers during their escape. Simmons was OK as the Watertown Sergeant. Goodman was strong as the Commissioner. Picking was wonderful as the caring officer that was shot by the brothers. Monaghan was engaging as Officer Saunders’ wife. Peter Berg, Matt Cook, and Joshua Zetumer wrote a very ambitious screenplay that attempted to cover numerous stories around this very tragic event. In this ambitious effort, it lost a little heart and focus. Peter Berg did his best to cover this expansive story.

Overall:  This is an amazing story to tell and it does honor the affected people.

Source Code

First Hit: I liked it because it required me to think and made me wonder if it was possible.

What the film lacked was a strong, clear, and viable explanation for the ability to program one person into another person’s body to replay events that have already happened.

In a 1993 film called “Brainstorm” scientists were able to record someone’s experiences onto a form of video tape. Then a completely different person could put on a specifically designed headset, play back this recorded experience and the wearer would have the same experience that was recorded.

This bit of new technology seemed plausible because the film took some time to explain how it worked to the audience. In "Source Code" the ball is dropped here by either the actor playing Dr. Rutledge (played by Jeffrey Wright), the scientist who invents this “Source Code” phenomenon, or by poor scripting. What I think I heard was; that when a human dies there is a 8 minute segment of experiences still active in the brain (like RAM) and if tapped into (through the use of electrodes and “Source Code”) within a short period of time after their death, another person, who is compatible in physical characteristics, can experience the dead person’s last 8 minutes.

The interesting thing is that they are only renting the body, because the person who is being sent in is the conscious one. OK, I tried and I’ll think about it some more but I think it goes something like that. In this film Captain Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a helicopter pilot only being brain alive, wakes up on a train.

Christina Warren (played by Michelle Monaghan) is sitting across from him and talking to him. He is perplexed about what she is saying. He's thinking; who are you? Why am I on this train? He's asking these questions because his last memory is being a helicopter pilot on a mission in Afghanistan. He’s feeling nauseous goes to the bathroom and looks in the mirror only to find the body and face he's looking at isn’t his; it's somebody else’s.

Confused he makes his way back to the train car with Christina and then a bomb goes off and he is blown up with everyone else on the train. He wakes up in a small metal capsule, which I took as being the helicopter wreckage he died in (this is his last known living experience).

Captain Colleen Goodwin (played by Vera Farmiga) appears on a small video screen in front of him asking him what he learned. “Did you find the bomb?” “Did you find the bomber?” Stevens answers negatively and starts asking about what is going on. Who is in charge? What happened? Coldly Goodwin tells him he’s got to find the bomb and bomber quickly so that other lives will be saved. She turns to an assistant and tells him to recharge and bingo, Stevens is back on the same train at the same time with the same sequence of events. He sets his timer on his watch for 8 minutes and begins to try to do the job Goodwin told him to do.

He gets blown up again and again until he finds the bomb and then starts to make caring connections with Christina (who calls him by Sean Fentress - the name of the guy whose body he’s replacing). Each time the train blows up he goes back to his capsule as Stevens. He questions Goodwin and Dr. Rutledge attempting to find out more about how he is able to be in another place and time than what he knows was his last memory as Stevens. Goodwin tries to tell him more and Wright, who comes off as arrogant and self-serving, tries to explain his invention.

In the end, Stevens does complete the mission, Goodwin gives Stevens his wish, and people are saved.

Gyllenhaal is very good at giving us both an intelligent dutiful officer doing his duty as well as having compassion for Warren and others on the train and wanting to resolve an issue with his father. Monaghan is beautifully engaging and provides just the right amount of willingness and openness to understand what is going on. Farmiga is really good as the duty constrained officer who is working for an arrogant but bright boss. Wright played an either poorly written character or he poorly acted the character and I don’t know which. But this was the weakest part of the film. Ben Ripley wrote the script and I’m not sure if he did a good job and the explanation was poorly acted or if it was just one part of the script that was poorly written. However, the rest of the script was great. Duncan Jones did a great job of engaging the audience, getting Gyllenhaal to slowly realize what was going on and to make this film compelling about the possibility of being yourself in someone else’s body.

Overall: I enjoyed this film and although I’m not sure the logic hung together well with the given explanations; overall it was well done and interesting.

Eagle Eye

First Hit: I was engaged early on but as the film went on it became less plausible and interesting.

Shia LaBeouf plays Jerry Shaw who appears to be an intelligent loner who has a slacker career working as a copy associate at a copy store.

He cannot make his boarding room payments but one day, after the funeral of his twin brother, he finds $750,000 dollars in his bank account and as he walks disillusion into his boarding house room it is filled with boxes of weapons and explosive devices and materials.

While opening some of the containers he receives a telephone call from a woman who says the FBI will be there in 30 seconds he must leave immediately. He is confused and doesn't know why or how he got this call. But within 30 seconds the FBI break into his room and arrest him. While questioning him, he is allowed to make a phone call and as he dials, the woman’s voice comes on the phone again and says lie down on the floor in 14 seconds.

A few moments later a crane sweeps through the room and creates a way for him to escape. A sign across the street flashes “Jerry jump”. This time he follows the instructions from the phone woman’s voice and jumps.

This opening sequence is followed by another sequence with Rachel Holloman (played by Michelle Monaghan) who receives a phone call that if she is to see her son alive again she must walk to the end of a block and get into a car. These two end up together and are linked but they don’t know why.

The mystery in the film is who the mystery voice on the phone is; what does she want, why is she doing this, and how does she see, control, and know everything about them? The set up is great but the film lags and gets more convoluted the farther along it goes. This is unfortunate as some of the other characters played by Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson are never fleshed out to give the film some depth.

Overall: This film starts with a great beginning but settles into a somewhat predictable blandness and is in the end unsatisfying.