DVD Review: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

I loved Brad Bird's work on The Incredibles (2004). But I hated what he did to Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Yes, I actually purchased the DVD because I heard this film was so good and planned to write what I thought would be a glowing DVD review. Boy, was I surprised.

The beginning of the film was confusing, but that's not a problem because it's OK to start out with a mystery and have it reveal itself as the story progresses. I was surprised to see Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) in the field at the very beginning of the action. I had envisioned this "inside man" being forced outside with Hunt's (Tom Cruise) IMF team after some dire emergency resulted in all of the IMFs being disavowed. That particular surprise was not a pleasant one.

No, I like Simon Pegg's work a lot but let's face it, he's a comedian. He's supposed to be funny. He was used for comic relief, but he was too comic. His quips, babbling, and fubars would have gotten Hunt and the rest of the rogue IMF group killed if all this was a real-life op. In fact, when Dunn was distracted while guarding assassin Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux), he very nearly did get himself, Carter (Paula Patton) and Brandt (Jeremy Renner) killed. I would have been fine with Dunn having an active role throughout the film if Bird would have directed him to be just a little more competent (Dunn did redeem himself by saving Brandt's life late in the film, however).

But that wasn't the only problem.

At first, I couldn't put my finger on it. I knew there was something wrong with the film, but I didn't know what. It had all of the right elements, but I just wasn't as engaged with the action as I should have been. My first clue was the pay phone Hunt used after he was rescued from prison. He's in the middle of Moscow and there just happens to be a pay phone that, when you punch in the right code, turns into an IMF mission assigning device. Don't Russians ever service pay phones? If that was a permanent device, sooner or later, some telephone repair guy was going to come along and find out that the U.S. had at least one secret dispensing machine in Moscow. Of course, it did "self destruct," but only after Hunt had to bang on it like an old radio with a bad connection.

What finally clued me in was the fake freight train car. OK, you've just escaped from Russian security after they think you've blown up the Kremlin. The "Secretary" (Tom Wilkinson in an uncredited role, who I recognized as "Carmine Falcone" from Batman Begins, 2005) has just been murdered and you're on the run with a know-nothing (or so you think) analyst, trying to find some resources that the Secretary said (right before dying) that he would "overlook" so you could "re-avow" yourself after the President has disavowed all IMF teams everywhere.

So the U.S. Government just happens to put a secret, high-tech train car in the middle of a Russian train yard, hooked up to a Russian freight train, and it just happens to be in the right place at the right time. Doesn't anyone inspect trains in Russia? Isn't there some kind of inventory of how many cars a train is supposed to be transporting, what they look like, what they are supposed to contain? This one just happens to get overlooked all of the time?

That was bad enough, but the retina scanner was an insane security addition, as evidenced by how difficult it was to use in order to get in the car while the train was moving.
That's when I figured it out. I was watching a cartoon!

It's OK for The Incredibles to have ridiculous people, devices, and circumstances and still be suspenseful and exciting because it is a cartoon, but Mission: Impossible, although it does have its improbable elements, is supposed to be a tad more realistic and even gritty.

I kept thinking back to the original Mission: Impossible (1996) film. It was gritty, and bloody, and action packed without being ridiculous. It had its little "comedy" moments to lighten the mood, but they didn't distract from what was going on and I never got the impression (well, almost never) that any key member of the IMF team didn't know what he or she was doing.

Oh, and I didn't care that Agent Hanaway (Josh Holloway) got killed. I know it really broke up Agent Carter, but there was no time for any character development of Hanaway, so the audience (including me) had no time to become attached to him in any way, shape, or form. There was also so little development of Moreau, that I didn't really find her all that interesting, let alone dangerous. She didn't creep me out the way she should have. And even though there was a little bit of development of the "bad guy," Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nygvist), I didn't really hate him. I mean in Mission: Impossible III (2006), I really hated Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and would have put a bullet in him myself if I had the chance (the character, not the actor). But I just didn't care what happened to Hendricks. It didn't matter to me whether he lived or died.

I have to say, I liked the character of William Brandt early on in the film. It was nice to see Jeremy Renner play someone not superbly confident, super-skilled, and totally bad ass. However, all that (most of it) was a cover for an agent who thought he'd blown his mission to protect Hunt's wife. He was just pretending not to be super-skilled and bad ass (he was still not confident, but that will no doubt change). I also read that Brandt's role was specifically included so that the character would be available at whatever point Cruise decides to leave the Mission: Impossible franchise. As crummy as I thought Ghost Protocol was, Hunt is the IMF in the franchise. Not sure how Brandt (or Renner) is going to carry it or if I even care (now that Renner is associated not only with the MI franchise, but "Bourne" and "The Avengers" as well, he seems to be the "flavor of the month," so I guess he's not crying about all the attention).

Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames). I love the character and the actor, but what's the deal with the cameo? I mean, what's the point? You could have filmed the entire scene without him and it would have worked. There was no reason whatsoever to include him except that you could.

And Hunt's wife is alive, the ultimate "Mission: Impossible" ending, the ultimate illusion, the ultimate result of misdirection, but I didn't care about that, either. By the end of the film, I was tired and disappointed. Please don't make anymore Mission: Impossible films, Hollywood. I'm done with making movies out of old TV shows. Try something new for a change. Please?

Review: The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises. The Dark Knight Descends. The Dark Knight Trilogy is over.

No, it wasn't the best of the three films by far and indeed, it may have been the worst. That's not to say that it was "bad," just that it didn't amaze and enthrall me like the first two films.

Batman Begins (2005) amazed me just because I've always been disappointed with all of the live-action Batman films prior to this one. Up until "Begins," I thought the best screen version of Batman was the WB animated series from the 1990s. After seeing Bale's Batman, the animated series (still quite good) seemed like just a cartoon.

"Batman Begins" showed everyone that superheroes could be "adult fiction" and reminded us all that Batman was supposed to be "dark".

The Dark Knight (2008) totally blew away "Begins." Part of it was the more realistic cityscapes. Chicago was used instead of a fictionalized Gotham and I absolutely loved the Hong Kong sequence. Nolan totally expanded Batman's universe from his first film and the Dark Knight became infinitely more "real." Of course, Heath Ledger's "Joker" completely stole the show, making his performance and this film a legend in fantasy film making.

That's quite a build up to "Rises" and there's always the danger that when you fly so high, there's a big fall is coming.

I wouldn't say "Rises" crashed and burned, but it had really big boots to fill after "TDK" and it didn't fill those boots.

I was worried that in trying to include Catwoman, Bane, Talia al Ghul and (briefly) Ras al Ghul, the film would suffer from too many villains and not enough development. That really wasn't the problem here and except for how Ras was handled, I thought the balance between all of the main "bad guys" was handled fairly well. It was just that all of the little puzzle pieces didn't quite fit together.

In TDK, all of the story elements, the characters, every little detail, fit hand and glove. Everything was in place. Nothing was wasted. The film was very "organized." That's not another way of saying "predictable" or "boring" but "efficient" and "seamless". I didn't spend any time analyzing the film while watching it, I just watched and enjoyed.

Not so with "TDKR".

All of the jumping around from place to place to place, and from flashback to flashback to flashback was distracting, distracting, distracting. I think I managed to keep up, but it was an effort and watching a story shouldn't be about trying to figure out what the filmmaker is saying, but allowing the narrative to flow over you like a dream.

The film is watchable. It's good. It just could have been better and maybe even a little shorter.

Stuff I liked (warning: Spoilers): 

Anne Hathaway nailed it as Catwoman/Selina Kyle. Smart, agile, sexy, edgy, and even just a bit vulnerable.

Marion Cotillard played Talia al Ghul after all. Good. She needed to be part of the trilogy, though I'm sorry she and Bruce couldn't have forged more of a history before the end.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake. He's the obvious heir apparent to the "Mantle of the Bat" and even if I hadn't read other accounts of the film before finally seeing it, this would have been obvious from the start. I think we all knew that Batman wasn't going to survive the end of this film, but the hope of a "Dark Knight" type character had to be kept alive. There is no Gotham City with out a protector in black.

The Bane/Talia connection. I more or less liked this because I didn't see it coming. I also didn't like it because the explanation of Bane, Talia, Ras, League of Shadows, and why Gotham was brought to the edge of total destruction was not only rushed and forced, but it didn't really make a terrific amount of sense.
And yet, the weirdness of this "love affair" between two cold-blooded killers abruptly made them both less than monsters and almost human.

Bruce's secret isn't invulnerable. Blake figures it out just by seeing Bruce's face and knowing there's a Batman. Of course it was also because Blake's history parallels Bruce's, so one lost, hurt, and angry child recognizes another. Bane also figures it out which is terrifying. It's one thing that Blake knows because the guy just oozes "trust me" and "I'm a good guy," but Bane! It's a horrible thing when your worst enemy knows your every secret, turns you into a cripple, and then tosses you into the pit of hell.

Stuff I didn't like: 

Ras al Ghul was a hallucination that lasted a couple of minutes tops. So what?

It is true that Bruce's initial return as Batman was supposed to be a failure. Alfred even pointed out that he wasn't actually Batman anymore, just Bruce in a costume. Bane proved this by beating Batman to a pulp and breaking his back (which was demanded because that's what Bane is supposed to do to Bruce). But it's like I didn't believe it. The tragedy of Batman's defeat would have been much greater if he had regained more of his "Batman-ness"; if we could have believed he had a chance against Bane before being destroyed by him.

Heck, the theme of the film is even hope before disaster. There was no hope when Batman first faced Bane. We all knew he didn't have a chance.

Fusion reactor can be turned into a bomb. Yawn. OK, convenient plot device (literally) so Bane could have access to an atomic bomb without having to sneak it in, but first of all, to me, nuclear fusion reactors were just too fantastic for this movie and there was no build up...just Wayne blowing half his fortune to build one, then mothballing it because it maybe could be turned into a bomb (like nuclear fusion wouldn't be dangerous enough anyway). It was just too odd. It didn't fit.

Hardly anyone seemed like themselves. Bruce, Alfred, Fox, Gordon all seemed like they were sleepwalking through their roles. All of the personality, the humor, the "themness" of these characters was missing. It was as if they couldn't wait to finish filming their scenes so they could go off and do something else. The heart of the Batman films was just plain missing.

Robin. Oh for Chrissake, Robin? Blake's "real" name had to be Robin? Yuk.

Change "Blake" to "Drake" and you already have a Robin connection without having to be obvious or dumb.

Occupy Wall Street on steroids was another obvious element that was shoved down the audience's throat. What would happen if the "occupy" movement turned violent? Get all the 1%ers, try them, and kill them. Kill the police or otherwise get rid of them. Return the "power to the people." Really? If it actually worked out the way the film predicts, then we have some idea of why every revolution ends with the radicals becoming "the man."

Bruce has a medical exam before returning as Batman the first time. His body is shot. Given the description of his injuries, there's no way in hell he could have come back as the Dark Knight, especially after his back injury. No amount of "prison workouts" fixes no cartilage in the knees, elbows, and shoulders. Replacement surgery fixes that but he'd still never be Batman again. A Lazarus Pit fixes that too, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I sort of loved and hated the "happy ending." I guess I always wanted Bruce to survive because it creates the vain hope that if "Robin" or "Nightwing" or whoever really needs a hand, Batman would be there to back him up. I also like a happy ending just because the part of me that believes in justice thinks good guys should win in the end and "live happily ever after". On the other hand, it was also kind of sappy and given the knowledge of Alfred's annual vacation plan we are given earlier in the film, we all knew it was going to happen.

Stuff I wished for: 

Ras al Ghul really coming back. Given the plot and direction of the story, the film would have become quite a bit more complicated had Ras shown up alive, but competing with his daughter and the man he hated more than Bruce for control of the League of Shadows would have been an incredible showdown.

The Lazarus Pit. Part of me thought that Bane would actually kill Batman, that it would happen further into the film, and that a lovesick Talia (yeah, the film would have to be a lot different) would take Bruce's body to a Lazarus Pit to resurrect him. It would have been absolutely cool. The movie would have to be completely rewritten but it would have been totally awesome!

I could go on and on about the film. It's a flawed work of art. I'll be bitching for weeks about it. I'm sorry it ended this way. But for better or for worse. it ended. The ride is over.

Nolan used TKDR to try and pull together all of the perceived "loose threads" created in the first two films but particularly in "Begins." He tried too hard.

But if DC plans to make a Justice League film, the Dark Knight must not rise again, but be reinvented. What will he be like then?

DVD Review: The Expendables

I suppose with the theatrical release of The Expendables 2 just days away, it's about time I got around to seeing the original Expendables film (2010). I had always wanted to see it and heard that it was a good action film, but just never got around to it.

I rented the DVD without doing any sort of research on the film. I didn't talk to anyone about it and whatever "buzz" had been going on two years ago about this movie, didn't stick in my memory so I really had no idea what to expect.

I was disappointed. Yes, of course there was a lot of action. Lots and lots of shooting, explosions, throats being cut, dropping F-bombs, but somehow it just lacked something. I don't know what exactly.

Maybe a direction beyond an extremely high body count.

The film starts out right in the thick of things with Ross's (Stallone) team of mercenaries setting out to rescue some hostages from Somali pirates. The character Gunnar Jensen (played by Dolph Lundgren) is established as a dangerous rogue (even for a member of a team of hyper-violent mercs) right from the start, so I expected bad things from him and he certainly delivered.

The film seemed like standard action fare at this point, but the problem happened when the movie dared to develop some actual characterization for Ross's number two man Lee Christmas (played by Jason Statham). There wasn't any. After the film's first mission, Christmas (yeah, the ridiculous names for many of the characters was a distraction, too) rides off to find his girlfriend, who he hasn't seen in over a month, and he's shocked...shocked to find she's with another man. He avoids beating her or the other guy up (on this occasion) and rides off, wounded but proud. But I found I really didn't care. It was a cosmic "so what."

I know it's tough to pull off character development in an ensemble piece because you've got a lot of people to cover, plus you have to actually insert some action in the movie, but in this case, why bother? Of course, Statham's strength never was actually the ability to act as much as it is to create (or simulate) mayhem. This problem trickled down to the other principle actors.

I stopped looking for real acting ability from Stallone a long time ago, though many of his action films are watchable and even fun, but it seemed like it was impossible to make a real emotional connection with anyone associated with the Expendables...

...except Tool (played by Mickey Rourke). Stallone gave Rourke the job of defining the film's purpose and (literally) soul. There's a sequence (sadly not quoted at IMDB.com) where Tool is recounting to Ross a mission they were on many years before. At one point during the op, Tool says he was watching a woman on a bridge. They made eye contact and Tool knows that she's going to commit suicide. His response was to turn and walk the other way leaving her to die. Tool says that if he had saved her instead of walking off, not only would he have saved her life, but he'd have saved his soul. This is the only real emotion and sense of poignancy the film managed to convey and it only lasted about five minutes.

Beyond being the best acted scene in the entire film, you don't actually realize that it is the scene of the film until the climax, when Ross is rescuing the film's female lead Sandra (played by Giselle Itié) from the villain Munroe (played by Eric Roberts). At the point where Munroe either escapes with his hostage Sandra or dies, he screams at Ross that they're both alike, that they both have dead souls (supposedly a requirement for being a long-term merc or a drug dealing ex-CIA scumbag). Munroe is subsequently blown away and stabbed simultaneously, Sandra is saved, and Ross establishes for the audience that his soul remains intact.

But it was a stupid conversation and in real life, it never would have happened. Munroe wouldn't have given a damn about anyone's soul and even if he did, it was a dumb time to wax philosophical. I know that it was important for the film to actually say this stuff and it's how we can apply Tool's lament to Ross, but I just didn't "feel it." Sorry, Sly. Frankly, I think it was the worst part of the film...the attempt to say something more than "I'm a mindless action film...have fun." Stallone tried to imbue his movie with something beyond blowing up buildings and turning people into chunky salsa and failed. More than anything, that's why I was disappointed with The Expendables. Stallone took the one good scene in in the whole film and wasted it.

The cameos. This film marked the first time movie tough guys Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared in the same film and in the same scene (although Willis and Schwarzenegger never appeared in the same frame). Yeah, it was bitchin' just to see them together, but it was an obvious set up for the sequel, since Schwarzenegger's character Trench wasn't necessary for the scene.

After Gunner (Lundgren) tries to kill Yin Yang (Jet Li, and would they please get rid of these stupid code names) in a really nasty way and is shot by Ross for his troubles, I was disappointed to see Gunner alive and with the gang at the end of the film. OK, keep him alive for the sequel as an antagonist or as the lost soul who redeems himself by heroically saving the team before he dies, but don't just reinsert him into the group after he betrayed them and tried to kill one of their own.

This is definitely one film I'm glad I didn't spend money on to see in the theatre. I'm convinced more than ever that I won't see The Expendables 2 until it's released to DVD and then I might wait a couple of years before I get around to viewing it. Yeah, I like a good action film and the action parts were really good if mindless mayhem, murder, and torture (at one point Sandra is "waterboarded" by Toll Road, played by Randy Couture), but in spite of Stallone's best intentions, The Expendables just didn't have a soul.

Save Me, Supergirl!

Please, please, please save me!!!

Sorry. Just saw the image and had to say that. Thanks.

The Rising of the Knight in Everyone

I really wanted to find an image of Batman being the living crap out of someone. I really wanted to give my rage and heartache a representative graphic illustrating the 12 people killed and over 50 people hurt by a gunman at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado last night.

But I couldn't find something that captured my "imagination."

Instead, I found what you see posted at the top of this blog post. Maybe it's more fitting. Yeah, in "real life," Batman (if he existed in real life), would pound the bastard that shot up the movie audience into something that looks like chunky salsa, but afterward, rage would turn to grief. After all, it was the death of two innocent people, his parents, who were shot by a criminal, that created the Dark Knight in the first place. Every time some hood or madman guns down people just because they're there, it diminishes all of us. It creates, temporarily for most people, a collective drive toward justice, the need to protect the victims, the desire to punish the guilty.

But, news items being what they are and people being who we are, most of us tend to forget. We remember for weeks, months, years, what our favorite scenes are and lines of dialog from films such as TDKR, but we'll forget about the shootings in Aurora, Colorado in a few days. Something else will come along and drive it out of our memories and fractured attention spans.

For most of us, that is.

Bruce Wayne didn't forget. He never forgot. Of course, he was a kid and the people murdered right before his eyes were his parents, so you'd figure he'd never forget. But he did something more than remember. He took his anger, his guilt, and his fear, and turned it into a weapon; and incredibly powerful weapon. He turned it into Batman.

That doesn't do the rest of us much good. Batman is a fictional character. He only exists in the world of imagination. He is a symbol of our desire for dark justice and the need to not only punish the predators, but to brutalize them. He is the shadow to our light, the power to our powerlessness, the avenger to our victimhood.

He is the Dark Knight to our oppression.

We can't put on a costume and roam the night. We can't summon the heroes of fantasy into the real world of blood, and tear gas, and torn flesh, and dead bodies. But we can do something; we should do something.

All I can do is write, so that's what I'm doing. Probably a lot of people will have something to say about all this in the hours and days to come. This is me saying what I need to say right now.

As much as I'd like to take a baseball bat and beat the shooter's head like an overripe melon, that's not what needs to be done the most (I still think I'd like to do it, though, because I'm really angry right now).

No, what needs to be done more than pulling revenge and this guy's bloody colon out of his ass, is to remember the victims, to have compassion. To not give in to anger and rage, but to instead, nurture kindness and if you believe in that sort of thing, to pray for the wounded and the dying.

Anger, violence, and revenge may make us feel better in the short run, but it's justice, mercy, and compassion that heals the world in the long run. Don your metaphorical "Dark Knight" armor if you must and scream how much you'd like to hurt the guy that did all the hurting, but remember. Remember that afterward, you have to take the mask off and be who you are, to help, to rebuild broken lives.

That's the part about being a hero you don't see at the end of the movie. That's the hero in real life and I hope...I hope it's the hero you can find in yourself. I hope I can find him in me, too.

Virtual Reality, Virtual Hatsune

Technophile shut-ins, rejoice. The era of shimmery, for-your-eyes-only virtual girlfriends has arrived, says this video, uploaded to You Tube by user Alsionesvx. The film showcases an augmented reality system that allows users to project the pixilated Japanese pop star Hatsune Miku into their day-to-day lives. Using video goggles and an Xtion Pro motion sensor, Alsionesvx can take Hatsune, a wide-eyed, pigtail-wearing wraith who, significantly, has no mouth (and somewhat less significantly, has no nose), to the park. It’s sort of romantic. Then he, um, plunks her in his kitchen and paws at her tie: less romantic.
 
So begins the article at slate.com panning what actually turns out to be a really cool piece of technology. OK, so maybe virtual girlfriends aren't your thing (unless you're into porn...then admit it, they're virtual and they're girls), but suspend judgment for a minute and consider.

Let's say you can wear a device over your eyes that allows you (but only you) see a simulated image of anime character Hatsune Miku accompanying you wherever you go. This isn't a static image and in fact, looking at the video demo, it's really impressive. You can see "her" walking toward you making eye contact. When you look away, the image doesn't suddenly move keeping her in your line of sight. If you "saw" her walking toward you on a sidewalk, you can look away and not see her, then look back and she's still walking on the sidewalk getting closer to you, just as if she were an actual moving object in the world around you.

If you can see her at a distance and a real object gets in the way, she is hidden from view by that object (lets say a passerby or a tree) and then comes into view again when the object is no longer blocking your line of sight...just as if she were a real part of your environment. It's kind of impressive.

Even though she's virtual and you can't actually touch her (you can't even see her without the hardware), when you reach out and pat her on the head for example, she will "react" by showing signs of pleasure (no, not that kind of pleasure). She wears a tie and you can touch and move the tie (the demo doesn't involve touching or doing anything to any other part of her clothing). You can actually smack her on the head (as shown in the video) and she reacts as if she's afraid or in pain (which is the creepy part).

Why would you want this?

I don't think I would. I'd have to live in my head a lot more than I actually do and really, what's the point? I suppose if the software were developed to its logical conclusion, then it would make an incredible masturbation aid, but do guys really need that much help? There's already a plethora of porn on the web including Japanese hentai, so a cute, vaguely interactive anime girl isn't as necessary as you might imagine.

It does move the concept of virtual reality and the Star Trek holodeck one step closer to actuality (if the words "actuality" and "virtual" can be used together like this). If you combined the digital Hatsune Miku with something like Google's Project Glass, the possibilities are mind boggling. Toss the iPhone into the mix and then imagine Siri is "real". What about being able to see and interact with Tony Stark's "Jarvis"? How would 3D gaming be enhanced if the virtual person were an opponent?

You may not want a virtual anime girlfriend, but projecting the technology forward, there are a lot of applications besides the obvious "porn star" aspects.

What do you think? Is this creepy or cool?

Oh, here's the video: