Harry has more to say about MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2

It really is amazing how some people react to a review.

“That first hour? It's called a plot! Why the hell do you need to know a backstory for every character??? Did they do that in THE ROCK or ID4?”

My response: That first hour? No, it’s called BAD PLOT! You are so right, I don’t need to know the backstory for every character. I NEED A BACK STORY FOR AT LEAST.... AT LEAST ONE CHARACTER. Two would be really really nice.

THE ROCK? Well, let’s see. In THE ROCK, we have Nicholas Cage’s character. We know that he isn’t really prepared for in the field combat. We know that he doesn’t tend to handle tense situations all that well. We know that he has a girlfriend that is pregnant with his child. We know that she is in the city that will be bombarded with POISONOUS GAS/BIOCHEMICAL WEAPONRY! There is a MINOR personal stake in the situation. Then there is ED HARRIS’ character, who by the way... we know was a black ops mission specialist who lost many of his men in various operations. A man who was sick of his country not acknowledging their deaths, not giving benefits to their families and not giving closure for the sacrifice these men made. Oh.... then there is SEAN CONNERY. Well, he was a British Spy, on a mission to steal some American secrets to benefit her Majesty’s kingdom. He was caught, but not before he had hidden the microfilm. He was being held for life till he gave up the secret location of this film. He escaped once 20 years or so before, had a quick romance, fathered a child he had never seen. We know that she lives in San Francisco... Also the city being targeted by the terrorists. NOW.... While these plotlines are not fully explored, I know at LEAST BASIC MOTIVATIONS FOR WHY CHARACTERS ARE DOING WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

Sure, there are holes in logic. I understand that. But at no point does the movie STOP and do NOTHING for an HOUR other than have pretty shots that do not move the story along.

Ok... let’s take ID4. Will Smith’s character. We know he has a girlfriend, who has a little boy that he loves. We know that he has lost every single friend he has ever cared about. We know that his best friend died before his eyes, along with every last one of his fellow pilots. Jeff Goldblum? He’s a genius slacker type that works at a low level cable station, that picks up something weird and figures it out. He learns that it is a countdown. He has someone he loves and cares for, that isn’t really interested in him. He wants to convince her, .... yadda yadda yadda. While you might not like the character development.... they at least ATTEMPT some. There are BASIC MOTIVATIONS and histories to the MAIN characters. Not all characters, but some.

There was one fella in Talk Back that thought that the NOTORIOUS plotline was done wonderfully.

What? Ahem... Excuse me? Is that a joke? Heh, I’m not laughing. NOTORIOUS was a masterpiece. I never condemn a film for borrowing story elements. Hell, in my review, I wasn’t even going to bring up NOTORIOUS because... for one it was the OBVIOUS connection. BUT, since it has been offered up.... By all means let’s discuss it.

Cary Grant / Tom Cruise... let’s do this. I find the idea of this comparison fun. Ok. When Cary Grant is FORCED to make Ingrid Bergman be a whore for the United States Government. He knows that she will not be willing to do this. He secretly does not want her to do this, but frankly the mission takes precedence over his own personal emotions. He must be callous, he must be hard with her. He plays it insulting. Playing down whatever attraction he might have. Play up the fact that he knows she is a Nazi Slut. The film then becomes all about keeping up this deception. To keep her motivated to stay there, to find out the secrets of this Nazi group that dreams of reestablishing the Reich. They (Grant and his boss) want to be able to take down a vast conspiracy. Tom Cruise’s character grits his teeth, says all the obvious, I don’t want you to do this crap and leaves it at that.

MEANWHILE....

Ingrid Bergman / Thandie Newton. Alright, after the pure BABE factor... let’s get into CHARACTERS. In NOTORIOUS, Ingrid Bergman is a woman tired of the weight of what her father did during WWII. She has no family, but the Nazis that escape adore her. She drinks to forget the past, parties down because it helps her to forget. She meets this man, this nice guy. He takes her home. He offers her up a chance to make amends. She sees in him a way of making up for a lifetime of bad karma. With every word of spite she hears, she redoubles her efforts... Wanting to prove to him that she is worthy of his attention. She so wants to just live a normal life, she wants a life with a moral person. And in her confused messed up mind, being Mata Hari for the USA just seems the only right thing she has ever done. She also finds in the man who adores her, Claude Rains, a truly likable guy. She sees no death surrounding him. He truly does love her. It’s not just a sex thing. There are emotional connections. When she is discovered, it is not about suicide... she doesn’t even know she is being poisoned. And when she finds out, it is simply too late. She is too weak to even walk the few steps out of the house to recover and escape. Thandie Newton’s character? She’s a thief. She has no remorse or conscience for what it is she does. She is being blackmailed into serving this spy organization. She amazingly has emotions for Ethan Hunt because of some good dicking we suppose. Her character is made up of flirty eyes and smiles. No drama, no real emotion. Just a pretty girl.

OH... but wait... there’s more!

Dougray Scott / CLAUDE FUCKING RAINS!!! Claude Rains is a proud aristocrat of Germanic background. He had helped financed the Reich at the behest of his mother. He is a member of the Nazi party, but he is also just a regular guy. He isn’t the man that ever shot anyone. He was just a man with money, and never fully grasped the horror of what his money did. But he does know that he’s an older man. That has no heirs, no legacy. His family line stops with him. In Ingrid Bergman, he sees a dream. A woman that could give his life a personal resonance. A chance to have a family. She seems to be genuine in her affection for him. Her manners and grace are perfect for the world of aristocracy. She is his dream come true. He is fooled HOOK LINE AND SINKER! Dougray Scott’s character? Well he doesn’t buy her for a second. He’s pompous and bloated with evilness. No woman can bring him down. He is a hardened super spy/terrorist, that just wants to fuck her till he kills her. Hmmmm.... wow, that’s great. NOW, I can hear ya. “That’s not how I saw it.” Ok, he has a scene where he’s having some sort of stroke. Shaking like he’d been holding his breath for 2 minutes and turning all red in the face. But right after this... awwww, everything is groovy for him. He’ll just be the bang bang bad guy. No history or emotion for his character.

Now, I want you people screaming at me below to understand something real clear here. I tried to go see this film tonight, to take a second look at it, but... alas it was sold out. I was going to go with a friend who hasn’t read any online reports. He is 100% jazzed to see the movie. Fine. Cool. That’s who I want to see it with. I am willing to give all movies except BELOVED and I DREAM OF AFRICA a second chance. I do not, under any circumstances feel that MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 is a piece of shit. Woo’s style is far too good to be a mere log of excrement.

I can not in good conscience blame John Woo for the shortcomings of this movie. I can’t blame the miscellaneous assortment of screenwriters that wrote on this film. Why? Because throughout production, we have heard reports of two films being made. The one that John Woo set out to make and the film that the studio wanted to make.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 is a car crash between these two ideals. The studio wanted safe summer entertainment palpable for the masses. John Woo wanted to make a John Woo movie, which is a form of violent opera and ballet. Throughout the shoot of this film we heard rumors of conflicts between star and director. Studio and star. And lastly studio and director.

Of course, the publicity machine is in full swing now. You see Cruise smiling and talking about how it was a religious experience. Woo seems strangely missing from the interviews and soundbytes. The studio talks about how everything went smoothly. The same cover story was used on HARD TARGET, when the film John Woo made was heavily tampered with, and for folks who have been lucky enough to locate bootleg tapes of this legendary cut.... who learned that Van Damme was not the focus, but Lance Henriksen’s villain... well, they saw the beginnings of the real Woo movie.

Imagine if you will had a studio toyed with Peckinpah like this. That is the scary part of this. In the USA, land of the free, Woo has been anything but free. In Hong Kong, well that was a different story.

As for the film, I wholeheartedly recommend you see it. When Woo kicks in about an hour or so in... You will be completely entertained, so long as you are not thinking of Woo’s earlier Hong Kong works.

Cruise and Thandie have never looked better. Woo and the camera love both of them. Worship them. Creates all the aura that they should have. However, the characters don’t have any of the involvement or weight that they should have. This is either a scripting problem or an editing one, where those scenes might have been snipped.

This is a matinee movie recommendation. In Austin that equals $3.50-$4.50. Where you live... that could be more. When the super special DVD comes out... And god willing a Director’s Cut.... I’ll buy it. I’ll buy it just for those last 45 minutes. They rock. But the rest of this film was stillborn for me.

As for people that say, all of Woo’s Hong Kong films don’t have character development.... You are so full of shit.

Chow Yun Fat playing a clarinet, showing that his character wishes to create rather than destroy. His friends die. His friends bleed. He’s been crippled, turned from being a tough as nails hitman, into one of those squeegee guys awaiting his friend’s release from prison. He becomes friends with the guy wanting to kill him. He performs Hits in order to afford money for an operation for a girl blinded by the flash of his gun. His previous films are filled with background and character development.

As rocking cool as the MI theme is.... musically, it never fully becomes mythic or epic for me. Now there are MOMENTS, GLANCES, brief glimpses of mythic greatness. Roadsigns that read “COOL” that flash by your window at 55 miles per hour.

For me the film has major flaws. Today, I read a review of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 in the local paper that gave the film 4 Stars, then admits that the film is far from perfect. That there are 45 minutes of the film that slam to a grinding halt. If in a two hour and five minute film. If one/third of the film is a consecutive grinding halt... I can not in good conscience give the film a 4 star rating. For me, this is a two and a half star film. Which basically means that it has major flaws that I could not overcome, but was not a painful experience and had moments that I really dug.

Personally, I’ve never understood how some movie fans seem to believe 100% in the thumbs up/thumbs down nature of film. Mediocre is middle of the road. It’s that wavy hand, that phrase that is “so-so”. For me, film going is made up of multiple colors. Not just black and white... not even just adding shades of grey. Film sometimes can be tacky, which is more like Purple and Green. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 is a red and blue film. It runs hot and cold. For the first half of the film, I felt like I was sitting in a very cold pool of water that shrunk my ballsack into Sumo mode, and then gradually as the hot water poured in... my testicles began to feel filled with testosterone.

This was not a perfect sauna experience, complete with massages and wraps and jet streams that made you coo and make awe noises.

And that is my further thoughts on the film. Ultimately, nothing I say or any other critic says is meaningful in regards to this film. This is a summer hype film. The screens locally were sold out. There are those that will love this film and those that hate the film. And both will say that the other is on crack, and really... no argument that either side makes will ever convince the otherside that the crackpipe is not being toked upon. The real deciding vote will be box office. Not for this weekend, but next weekend. What will the percentage drop be? Because that number is determined by the number of people like you that in turn goes home and calls their friends and family and either says, “Dude that MI2 fucking sucks!” or “Dude that MI2 fucking rocks!” My bet is on a 44% drop in the second week. Which basically is what so-so movies drop in their second week.

Now go on, scream, yell names, piss all over the comments, that’s how and why I feel about this movie. But I really do hope you had a good time with the film. I never wish bad filmgoing experiences upon anyone.

P.S. Oh... and as for the Palm Pilot comment.... I don’t even own a Palm Pilot. That was a specific recommendation to those that live in that culture that does use them.