Mission: Impossible: 3: As In Number 3: Tres
Does anyone else think the use of dual colons is lame when they shortened it to M:I:3? I feel like some bimbo decided it just needed that extra spice of symmetry, and threw in a second colon.
Anyway, "M:I 3" is about Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt, who is in the midsts of winding down his secret life, as seen in the prior two movies. And now he's looking for a "Rabbit Foot."
I wasn't too sure what to expect, especially with all the negative publicity Tom Cruise has been getting lately (which I have no doubt will color some people's view of the movie), but I liked it. My companion also liked it, which makes it more difficult to bounce analysis around, so I tried to read some negative reviews to get my thoughts going, and they are thus: The action was good. Some say it wasn't edge-of-your-seat enough, but I felt it was exciting, while being appropriately realistic, as far as movies go. No more of that bullshit motorcycle mid-air jousting bullshit, or tra-la-la dual-car spin-dancing. Yeah sure, it wasn't *completely* realistic, because Ethan Hunt would've been dead two movies ago, but instead of over-the-top action, you got more technical action. For example, an explosion throws Tom Cruise against the side of a car. The glass of the back window cracks. Nice attention to detail (yes, it'd probably kill him in real life). Agents convincingly moved and covered their zones of fire. Etcetera.
And the movie keeps most of the blatant blunders of action movies to a minimum. As one of the Austin Powers movies pointed out, all too often, the good guy is allowed to live to meet his impending, but not current, doom. I almost thought M:I 3 was going to suffer that flaw, but it gracefully weaved its way out of it. The biggest action-movie blunder committed by the movie, off the top of my head, is "bullet dodging." It's a typical problem with "realistic" action movies (non-Matrix), and many modern action movies have tried to solve it as they try to be more and more realistic, but its presence was negligible and acceptable.
Finally, the length was also good. I was worried it might run too long, but it went well. Rather than show every possible action sequence that Agent Hunt is involved in, the movie tactfully skips certain parts. Yes, we know he's good by now. We can accept that he pulls off whatever he was trying to do that was not shown, just as I accept that every character in every fictional work knows how to use the restroom, and does not need to be shown doing so. So in conclusion, a good, fun "summer" action movie to start the season. As far as comparable movies go, off the top of my head, it's better than Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Anyway, "M:I 3" is about Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt, who is in the midsts of winding down his secret life, as seen in the prior two movies. And now he's looking for a "Rabbit Foot."
I wasn't too sure what to expect, especially with all the negative publicity Tom Cruise has been getting lately (which I have no doubt will color some people's view of the movie), but I liked it. My companion also liked it, which makes it more difficult to bounce analysis around, so I tried to read some negative reviews to get my thoughts going, and they are thus: The action was good. Some say it wasn't edge-of-your-seat enough, but I felt it was exciting, while being appropriately realistic, as far as movies go. No more of that bullshit motorcycle mid-air jousting bullshit, or tra-la-la dual-car spin-dancing. Yeah sure, it wasn't *completely* realistic, because Ethan Hunt would've been dead two movies ago, but instead of over-the-top action, you got more technical action. For example, an explosion throws Tom Cruise against the side of a car. The glass of the back window cracks. Nice attention to detail (yes, it'd probably kill him in real life). Agents convincingly moved and covered their zones of fire. Etcetera.
And the movie keeps most of the blatant blunders of action movies to a minimum. As one of the Austin Powers movies pointed out, all too often, the good guy is allowed to live to meet his impending, but not current, doom. I almost thought M:I 3 was going to suffer that flaw, but it gracefully weaved its way out of it. The biggest action-movie blunder committed by the movie, off the top of my head, is "bullet dodging." It's a typical problem with "realistic" action movies (non-Matrix), and many modern action movies have tried to solve it as they try to be more and more realistic, but its presence was negligible and acceptable.
Finally, the length was also good. I was worried it might run too long, but it went well. Rather than show every possible action sequence that Agent Hunt is involved in, the movie tactfully skips certain parts. Yes, we know he's good by now. We can accept that he pulls off whatever he was trying to do that was not shown, just as I accept that every character in every fictional work knows how to use the restroom, and does not need to be shown doing so. So in conclusion, a good, fun "summer" action movie to start the season. As far as comparable movies go, off the top of my head, it's better than Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
10 Comments:
I notice Ron's movie reviews (from here and his own website) tend to focus on realism and plausibility. For me, however, I like to focus on storytelling, pacing, and acting performance. M:I:3 was excellent in all aspects.
Director JJ Abrams and his writers made a fun story and paced it out gracefully. I was worried that the movie would miss the mystery aspect and just be a pure action movie (like the second MI movie). But it had your twists and turns (and the neat government conspiracy).
Phillip Seymour Hoffman's role as generic evil bad guy was understated, but wonderful, nonetheless. It was enough to make you want to kill him yourself.
The NY Times review didn't like the movie because of Tom Cruise, but I really don't understand why. Sure, he's weird outside of his roles, but he's a fine actor and played his role just fine.
I found the movie to be a nice mix of the cerebral mystery of the first movie with the balls to the wall action of the second movie. Nicely done.
BTW...Maggie Q is one classy lady.
By
David, at 5/06/2006 2:26 AM
Oh yeah. Worst part of the movie: The scene where Maggie Q prays and talks about her cat. Horrible and unnecessary.
By
David, at 5/06/2006 2:39 AM
I notice Ron's movie reviews (from here and his own website) tend to focus on realism and plausibility. For me, however, I like to focus on storytelling, pacing, and acting performance. M:I:3 was excellent in all aspects.
Mmm, that couldn't be further from the truth. In this case, I did, because of the genre. There are plenty of movies that I loved that could never be realistic: Spirited Away, Casshern, My Sassy Girl, etc. Plausibility is something that needs to be supported by both sides. I've gotta be drawn in, and allow suspension of belief to take place, but the movies gotta smoothly take me there. As for pacing, I believe I mentioned that, but I find a bit of ir0ny there because you really liked Kong, and yet that movie had some excessively long fight scenes in my opinion (yes, the T-Rex pulled off another three-hit combo, can one of them please die already?).
Out of curiosity, in an action movie like MI3, how is realism and plausibility mutually exclusive from storytelling and pacing anyway? If a cow appears and butthumps Agent Hunt, I can't see how that doesn't affect at least three of those "categories."
That's one reason I highly disagree with your storytelling comment (it's so broad anyway; I might as well say, "I like movie"). Presentation is everything. With the right presentation, any bullshit, recycled story can be made good. This is especially true with whimsical fiction: fantasy, sci-fi, cartoons, etc.
But I'll give you acting. I rarely focus on that, unless someone is extremely horrible and it detracts from the movie's "Suspension of Disbelief", but it usually doesn't go that far for me, and so I don't find it too irksome.
I was going to mention the NYT review as well, but I wanted to trim my post. The first two paragraphs of their review seems to be nothing more than how much Cruise sucks as a person, and then it actually moves onto the review. And the other negative review I read, the reviewer was confused within the first ten minutes. Uh...She thought after the first scene, that it had actually moved into the future to the party scene. And from there she knocked the movie for having poor temporal transition. Ha. No.
By
Ron, at 5/06/2006 12:10 PM
I also agree regarding Maggie Q. I was very impressed with how well she did her action scenes. I can't think of any actress at the top of my head that moved as well as she did, and she didn't even have a lead role.
By
Ron, at 5/06/2006 12:16 PM
On the "pray for the cat" thing...I was actually hoping that would have segwayed into more character development for the other two agents, but I suppose there wasn't really any room for that.
By
Robert, at 5/06/2006 12:57 PM
There's no argument here. I don't think realism and plausability are mutually exclusive from the other captions I listed. Those are definitely functions of storytelling.
I said what I said above because I noticed your reviews like to focus on the details, whereas I like to review the overall effect. But it's the same thing. The details add up to the overall effect.
While I won't ignore the small details that add to the realism (the way Tom Cruise flies into the car after an explosion), I like to focus more on the way the story is told. Does the movie make sense or does it lose its focus? Storytelling, to me, is an umbrella term that covers realism, plausability, direction, flow, pacing, and so on.
I think a really good example is Star Wars: Episode 4. We all know there's plenty of technical mistakes in that movie and the dot-matrix read outs of the Death Star sure don't help with the realism, but the storytelling--the overall effect--works out well. Even when George Lucas ruined the Han/Greedo scene in the 1997 special edition, I still enjoyed it.
Even plot holes don't bother me too much. Despite other people's criticism, I really liked Signs. Yeah, I know...why would aliens allergic to water go to a planet covered in water? I don't know, but the movie worked anyways.
Anyway, I think we agree on the same thing. I don't think there's such a thing as a bad story. It's bad storytelling that makes stories bad.
By
David, at 5/06/2006 1:28 PM
As for King Kong's pacing, I wasn't bothered by the T-Rex fight scenes at all because there was a good pay off at the end of the fight. Long drawn out scenes don't bother me as much as long as there's some resolution--or "money shot," if you will--to them.
Though, I define pacing as how well "fast" and "slow" scenes are organized. For instance, in MI3, after Ethan Hunt jumps onto the Shanghai tower where the rabbit's foot is stored, we watch a "slow" scene where Maggie Q is praying. It was good moment for the audience to relax before another action sequence, even though I thought the dialouge was cheesy. Another good example is when Hunt sprints for a few miles to find his captured wife, then he stops only to find a group of old Chinese men playing cards (or something like that). It slowed everything down, but it was essential in order to build up suspense towards the "final boss" level.
By
David, at 5/06/2006 1:41 PM
Plot holes don't really bother me too much either, nor do technical mistakes, on the other hand, technical details do get bonus points from me. For example, I had a friend complain about how the fire swirled around the legs of the robots in War of the Worlds. To me, that's irrelevant. I also pointed out that War of the Worlds suffered the same essential plot hole as Signs, and yet WotW was far more well received. An alien race planned far in advance an invasion of Earth, only to be defeated by some small oversight. The difference was in the presentation of that plot hole.
But I still think you're misinterpreting the realism thing somehow. As I said, with this type of movie, it happens to be relevant, in my opinion. I don't think I mentioned realism at all in my Thank You for Smoking review.
Personally, I like to include details in my reviews, because quite frankly, I think reviews would become a bit repetitive, especially for positive reviews. X actor performed well. Y plot flowed well. Executive summary: Good. That's the problem with a lot of "professional reviews." 50 to 75 percent of them are synopsis. I don't need that, nor do I want the spoilers that come with it.
I'm also interested in how somehow you can differentiate pacing from details, because "details", to me, is also an umbrella term. Indeed, the examples you gave are pretty technical. And they would've been welcome in your review, I think, which was devoid of any details.
But that's the problem; there are so many things you could write about, that you've got to pick and choose. For MI3, being an action movie, I chose technical realism.
By
Ron, at 5/06/2006 2:23 PM
Of course, if the fire had swirled around the legs and spelld out, "Fuck America," then yeah, I would've complained.
Regarding the T-Rex fight scene, I personally didn't find the payoff to be worth the length of the fight. In fact, the fight isn't even that memorable, except for the Westernish showdown scene. To me, it seemed like a bunch of great fight ideas and "choreography" that were strung together. But, in my opinion, the really skilled movie makers know when and what to cut, even if, by itself, the scene is very good. Does it add to the enitre movie? Does it take away a significant amount if it's removed? My answer would be "no" for both. If the fight scene were 50% shorter, it still would have been awesome.
By
Ron, at 5/06/2006 2:27 PM
I should clarify. Technical mistakes within reason, don't bother me. If it's a background thing, who cares. If it's not so much, and it's really dumb, then yeah, it'd bother me. Like in T3, Arnold's head gets severed off. He screws it back on like a cartoon. That is stupid.
On the other hand, if the bolts on his lower right arm are slightly askew, or don't make sense, who cares?
I'd like to point out that I thought your Silent Hill review was good, having its share of details. Personally, I find it easier to include details from movies I dislike. Therefore, I try to make an effort to include details in positive reviews as well. That may or may not be true with you, I'm not sure. I haven't seen enough reviews from you, yet.
By
Ron, at 5/06/2006 2:49 PM
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