I was interested in this film because JJ Abrams of Alias and Lost fame wrote and directed it. I was less interested because of Tom Cruise reprising his role of Ethan Hunt. If you remember all his recent antics happened a bit before the opening. So I ended up catching it on DVD and I'm content with that. Yeah it's a big summer spectacle, but there's something nice about seeing it while home on a snowy weekend after seeing Oscar nominees for a couple of months.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is the villain Owen Davian and he's great. if he had more screen time, he might have been one of the best villains of all time. As it stands, he's merely one of the most capable, ruthless and remorseless. Hoffman's Davian pwns Cruise's Hunt and to prove it the movie opens with an insanely tense scene between them. It's perhaps the best scene in the film and I won't ruin it. I will say this, while most other films would be counting to 3, in this one they count to 10 (not 11) and they use that extra time to go through every cliche version of that scene ever done. It's visceral and it's great. Many reviews say it throws off the pacing of the film but I don't agree.
Many reviews also complain that the film is just action pieces strung together with no story and little tension. There are a lot of action scenes, they're strung together with the minimal motivation needed and in a couple of cases none, because the characters don't know what's happening to them. The central plot is certainly a MacGuffin, but so what; they were good enough for Hitchcock. There's a sub-plot about Hunt getting engaged and whether someone with his job can afford a normal relationship. They don't spend enough time on them and we don't get to know her but it does give Hunt some motivation which is all the film wants from it.
So the film is about the action, how was it? Good. Yes they are a bit over the top, but not crazy so. Laws of physics are not egregiously violated and in a shot used in the commercials and explosion actually blows Hunt into a car, see physics. While the law of physics are conserved the laws of logistics are not. Yeah there's some crazy equipment (infrared vascular id?) and people travel all over the place and large boxes of stuff appear out of no where, but I found that easy to overlook.
The DVD had some extras about the stunts and Cruise did many of his own. There's a cool shot of him climbing a wall with a small pulley, it's real. Then he uses it to fall down the wall a la the first MI film and he really did the fall. And there's a scene where he uses a pulley to leap off a skyscraper and swing to another building. This one doesn't go perfectly and I found it very fun. The fact that these are actual stunts done by the star gives it a sense of realism that so many other films don't have. Perhaps it's because the shot can show the whole stunt without cutting so you can actually follow the action. So many other films fail at this but this one doesn't.
In films like Born on the 4th of July, Magnolia, A Few Good Men, and Rain Man Tom Cruise has proven he can act. In films like Minority Report, War of the Worlds and the previous Mission Impossible films he's proven he can do stunt work. In this film he does good stunts and he runs very very well. Seriously, it's like watching an Olympic sprinter. In a lot of heats.
I had a lot of fun with this film. It could have just been my mood, but I think it's a good minimalist approach to an action film. it's got the stunts, a great villain, pokes some fun at itself and has the obligatory Mission Impossible twists and turns and latex masks.
Oh and Philip Seymour Hoffman needs to guest star on 24 so Davian can go up against Jack Bauer, I really want to see that.
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