Review: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol Rivals the Series’ Best

B+

The action sequences are executed with the confidence of a veteran...

The fourth film in the franchise and the first live-action endeavor from director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is filled with the verve and clarity of his animated action sequences while lending just enough gravity and remote plausibility to the stunts and gadgetry to keep it from becoming a glorified cartoon in and of itself.
We last saw Impossible Mission Forces agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) all but walking into the sunset with new wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Now? He’s locked up in a Russian prison and she’s nowhere to be found. In no time, Ethan is retrieved by IMF colleagues Jane Carter (Paula Patton) and newly promoted field agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, similarly promoted from the ranks of comic relief) and enlisted to help prevent a nuclear physicist code-named Cobalt (Michael Nyqvist of the original Dragon Tattoo films) from launching a couple of warheads in a planet-scorching plot worthy of a Bond film.
However, things go awry quite quickly for the team, as Cobalt frames them for a bombing at the Kremlin and the U.S. government consequently disavows the entire IMF agency – meaning that our three agents, along with intelligence analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), are armed only with limited supplies and no support in their efforts to avert worldwide destruction.
But for all the future tech that remains at their disposal, the gadgets often proceed to malfunction, with the first indication coming as a message that will self-destruct fails to do so. This sets the tone for the just-out-of-reach antics that “Alias” vets Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec have scripted for Hunt and the gang to conquer. The vaguely smirking villain and his devious plot are straight out of the Cold War, though divorced from that era’s pervasive paranoia (to which this month’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy helped itself), and a sprightlier sense of humor crops up nicely throughout without being doled out exclusively by Pegg as it often was in M:I-3. Obstacles aside, he, Cruise, Patton and Renner play off one another well between united feats of aligned purpose and individual prowess; perhaps more than in any other entry, no one member of the team feels any less vital than the others.
The real accomplishments tend to come from the team behind the camera, with Bird’s boy-and-his-toys ingenuity defining action sequences that are then executed with the confidence of a veteran. What’s more (literally) is the use of IMAX cameras for the action sequences, rivaling Christopher Nolan’s work on The Dark Knight for sheer scope and immersion, with the footage smoothly integrated into the film by way of an expanding frame (as opposed to the somewhat jarring shifts of Nolan’s footage, though fitting for that relative bruiser of a blockbuster). The technique really shines in the staggering Dubai-set centerpiece, an already breathless union of con game, car chases, foot chases and good old-fashioned derring-do in, outside of and around the towering Burj Khalifa skyscraper that is made all the more vertigo-inducing by the format for a solid twenty minutes. It’s an applause-earning show-stopper that outdoes the excellent bridge battle from the previous film and inevitably serves as a peak of sorts, the momentum from which carries the rest of this entry through to its hasty conclusion.
Every pummeling and pursuit is shot and cut for maximum clarity throughout by Robert Elswit and Paul Hirsch, respectively. A common thread between Bird and former series director/current producer J.J. Abrams, composer Michael Giacchino delivers another rousing score that leaps forth from the classic themes of the show to define itself in rightfully thrilling ways. Only one scenario involving magnetic levitation tests the tethers of suspended disbelief, evoking the first film’s iconic man-on-a-string antics without any of the string or nearly as much tension.
Hunt’s ultimate showdown with Cobalt echoes that of Goldfinger, and while it would appear counterproductive for this franchise to fashion itself after another spy series, it happens to be modeling itself on Bond adventures the likes of which aren’t really made anymore. Just as newly gritty heroes seem to have run their course (fingers crossed), Cruise and Bird are doing their damnedest to maintain the escapist thrills that we as audiences will always choose to accept.
Grade: B+

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Review: Organized Crime Turns Violence Against Itself in Outrage

C+

...regrettably single minded...

When we first meet the characters of Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage – the filmmaker’s first yakuza outing since 2000’s Brother – they almost all adhere to the same dress code. In sharp suits, they look like businessmen, and in time, we’ll realize that these men do indeed mean business.
They’re members of the Japanese mob, each in different clans, with each clan having different plans in terms of what should and does constitute their turf. The Chairman (Soichiro Kitamura) rules things regardless, but when some unseemly alliances and dealings arise, he deploys his enforcers to send a message. The problem is, when every yakuza leader believes that he ought to be top dog, everyone tries to send their own message in return, to bloody results…
If it seems like I’m being vague about plot specifics, that’s twofold: the characters are all equally driven by the same stubborn motives and are thus difficult to distinguish (that is, before they bear the brunt of evident physical abuse), and I think that is entirely actor/writer/director Kitano’s point. While his Otomo carries out orders on screen with a look of weary dedication, Kitano’s camera seems to find these self-destructive antics to be a dryly funny indication of what must inevitably happen when aggressive men attempt to honor some flimsy sense of a code.
Each man is a petty one, backed by a dwindling number of lackeys and endlessly prompted to perpetuate a cycle of violence, from which the camera does not flinch. An amusing ritual is made of fingers being lopped off for the sake of keeping the peace, an innocuous visit to the dentist ends in rather grisly fashion and one oblivious noodle shop patron fails to acknowledge the grisly kitchen interrogation that’s occurring mere feet away. No matter who’s sticking it to whom, and for whatever reason, it’s never the be-all, end-all of assaults because there’s always some other entitled crook in a suit somewhere else, concealing his own thirst for power beneath a thin veneer of professionalism.
For a good stretch, the cool remove of Kitano’s direction carries the scope of god’s-eye bemusement – look at these bastards, see how they run – but upon entering its second hour, the cadence of shouting and shooting threatens to go completely cold. Imagine if The Godfather were reduced down to Sonny getting ambushed and the climactic christening montage, or any of Scorsese’s gangster-minded works for that matter. It’s retaliation without foundation, all fun and games until everyone gets hurt. While the eruptions of violence do continue to sting, they hurt out of a formal sense of viscera, not out of any sympathy, empathy or identity with the victims.
In that regard, maybe Kitano the director is more like Otomo the character than one might initially think: professional as they come on the outside, but regrettably single-minded within.
Outrage is currently in limited release and also available on demand.
Grade: C+

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Review: Carnage Pays Manners No Mind

B-

Earns its own fair share of laughs.

At one point in Carnage, Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s award-winning play, Alan Cowan (Christoph Waltz) confesses to Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) his belief in the “god of carnage” – the original title of Reza’s play – a theoretical incarnation of mankind’s more primal, aggressive tendencies. The question is not whether this maniacal deity actually exists (let’s assume here that it does), but whether it initially pitted Zachary Cowan against Ethan Longstreet in a playground confrontation or is merely using that situation as a trigger to pit Zachary’s parents against Ethan’s. (Of course, there’s always ‘all of the above.’)
Given the situation’s violent origins, interaction between the adults begins courteously enough: Alan and Nancy (Kate Winslet) have given their apologies to Penelope and Michael (John C. Reilly) and they proceed to draft up a verbal agreement together. But then Alan quibbles with Penelope’s particular wording of the inciting incident (surely, his son wasn’t “armed” with a stick, but merely carrying one), a generous offering of coffee and cobbler backfires, and before we know it, the power dynamics of both couples begin to shift along the lines of politics, gender politics, class strife, parental responsibility, marital happiness and hypocrisy in general.
Coming in at just 79 minutes, Carnage is a transparent acting showcase on screen more than the fully formed farce of stage, but thanks to all that is spewed forth (not always words, I’m afraid), the results are still frequently hilarious. The theatrical conceit eases away, though never quite vanishes, as the characters resign themselves to this Brooklyn apartment, toeing the line between polite consideration and petty compromise until the location becomes their world entire – the one place where they can relinquish manners and proceed to bicker for dominance, validation, control before exiting out into a city that, like their children, couldn’t really care less at the end of the day.
Despite a co-writing credit with Reza, Polanski doesn’t deviate by much, although the Cowans’ ill-fated attempts to make it out the door become an odd, credibility-strained joke unto itself, with politeness and then pride luring them back into the fray. There’s enough other nonsense taking place on the periphery – with Michael under fire for ditching the family hamster outdoors and workaholic Alan constantly glued to his cell phone – that the potential for conflict rarely runs low, and Polanski (having recently experienced house arrest for himself) keeps the characters constantly confined by door frames, mirrors and close-ups.
And oh, what fun the players are clearly having. At the risk of inviting accusations of gender bias, Reilly and Waltz tend to steal the show here, with the former liberated by the absence of airs and the latter never once burdened with notions of common courtesy. Winslet gets wonderfully wound up while Foster finds herself worn down (her performance comes closest to downright hysterics in a crew that is by no means holding back), and the whole lot gets drunk much faster than you’d think over the back half of an afternoon.
Sometimes, for story’s sake, these characters act like outright idiots rather than regressing as intended to a more facile state of being. Eventually, though, they – and the film – find their belligerent groove, and from then until the regrettable whimper of the final frames, it’s bad behavior orchestrated well.
Grade: B-

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