Renner and Pegg save the (day) film
I remember watching the first Mission Impossible film and thinking it was thrilling and clever with a cracking twist at the end. I’ve never rewatched it, so forgive me if I’m remembering it wrong. Regardless, the sequels have never seemed as good. Like most action films they’re okay. They have some bangs and funny lines. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is, thankfully, saved from being just a corny action flick with large amounts of plot ridiculousness by Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner.
Let’s get what I didn’t like out of the way first.
The plot. What plot? Seriously, do not watch this for the plot. There are many recaps and moments of exposition to try and ensure that you know what is going on, which would make me feel like I was being treated like I’m stupid, except without those I probably wouldn’t get the details. There is a bad guy who wants to nuke the world to make it better place. The good guys are trying to stop him. Just go with it.
The ladies. We have a lady assassin who is good at her job and gets taken out by another woman and not a guy. Nice. Patton, our token female and character of colour is allowed to kick some ass and prove that ladies can do this job. She is involved. That’s nice. However, she gets to be the one in charge of the failed ‘simple’ mission that kicks the film off. She has to seduce a guy to get him alone to get information. No, it does not help that this guy seemingly ‘likes it rough’ and it really does not help that Cruise asks her not to hurt him before kissing her to get the mark interested. Seriously? She couldn’t get him alone another way? “Next time I get to seduce the rich guy,” says Renner and it’s nice that the film pokes fun at itself that way, but, YES, let’s have a guy seduce the rich guy. That would be brilliant.
We also get a ‘changing in the car’ scene. Um, where are guys stripping off? We get Patton having to sit things out later on when she gets shot. Don’t get me wrong; being shot is bad. But in a film like this, where Cruise climbs a very tall building and smashes through a glass window, drives a car head first into the ground, and all that jazz, being shot isn’t that big a deal, you know? Why couldn’t she carry on like the guys? And we get Patton being ‘the emotional one’. She’s emotionally compromised because a guy got killed in the mission at the start of the film who confessed to her as he lay dying that he’d been harboring feelings for her. This is compared to Cruise having his wife killed and used for the two of them to have a few emotional moments. Okay, why does the woman have to do the emotional connection parts? And how the hell is a work colleague dying meant to compare to your wife being killed? I mean, I can just about see it, but. And did we need this? Does the lady have to be upset because her work colleague had feelings for her? Couldn’t she just be upset because it was a person on her team that died and she was responsible for them?
Can we also have a moment to say how she gets ‘told off’ essentially for booting the assassin lady out of the window, but Cruise brings along a random Russian prisoner and that’s okay, he never gets called out on his mistakes, and Renner never gets yelled at for his blinking problem alerting the lady assassin to what’s going on?
Then we get Cruises’ ‘it’s my job to protect my wife’ bit near the end. Wow. I’m pretty sure since Cruise has been in prison and doing missions that meanwhile she’s been taking care of herself. Just saying.
The ‘bad guys’. Are foreign *sigh* and who knows what their motivations are? Our chief bad guy thinks nuclear war will make the world a better place. Okay, so he’s a nutter? What about those following him? Points for the weapons dealer who is on nobody’s side but his own and wouldn’t sell nuclear weapons to the nutter. Also points for some of the authorities not being completely stupid, although the guy in the Kremlin who keeps trying to investigate the mysterious dripping noise? Really?
That said. It was a fun film to watch. Cruise manages to have some amusing moments, even if he’s meant to be playing the hero figure, and I liked the running gag of technology failing. Pegg and Renner make this film though. They put the amusement and the heart into it. They both have fantastic moments and lines, and I loved the scenes they shared. Pegg is obviously meant to be the comic relief, but he does it so well that it never seems contrived. Renner plays the role of an Analyst and gets to point out some of the plot ridiculousness, but has some cracking one liners as well. Then, at the end, when Cruise and Patton’s last ‘emotional moment’ falls a little flat, Renner steps up and delivers a whole range of emotions as he tells Cruise about his role in the death of Cruise’s wife, is told that she isn’t dead, is accepted as a team member, and his face. Serious points to Renner.
And randomly. Tintin was one of the pre-film adverts and I spotted Moffat as one of the three screenwriters. I did not know this! Suddenly Tintin looks more interesting, heh.
Finally, I playing in the pit band (or orchestra) for three musicals when I was an undergrad and we always used the Mission Impossible theme tune for breaking down the set at the end of each performance. We had to turn the room back into a canteen and the only thing we were allowed to leave up was the main stage. Everything else had to be packed away. We rarely managed to get it done in the time it took for the theme to play out, but we had a damn good try and did manage it once or twice! Now I can’t hear that theme tune without wanting to leap to my feet and tidy up at super speed, which is amusing when it comes on in the middle of a film. Must. Stay. Seated. *grins*
Let’s get what I didn’t like out of the way first.
The plot. What plot? Seriously, do not watch this for the plot. There are many recaps and moments of exposition to try and ensure that you know what is going on, which would make me feel like I was being treated like I’m stupid, except without those I probably wouldn’t get the details. There is a bad guy who wants to nuke the world to make it better place. The good guys are trying to stop him. Just go with it.
The ladies. We have a lady assassin who is good at her job and gets taken out by another woman and not a guy. Nice. Patton, our token female and character of colour is allowed to kick some ass and prove that ladies can do this job. She is involved. That’s nice. However, she gets to be the one in charge of the failed ‘simple’ mission that kicks the film off. She has to seduce a guy to get him alone to get information. No, it does not help that this guy seemingly ‘likes it rough’ and it really does not help that Cruise asks her not to hurt him before kissing her to get the mark interested. Seriously? She couldn’t get him alone another way? “Next time I get to seduce the rich guy,” says Renner and it’s nice that the film pokes fun at itself that way, but, YES, let’s have a guy seduce the rich guy. That would be brilliant.
We also get a ‘changing in the car’ scene. Um, where are guys stripping off? We get Patton having to sit things out later on when she gets shot. Don’t get me wrong; being shot is bad. But in a film like this, where Cruise climbs a very tall building and smashes through a glass window, drives a car head first into the ground, and all that jazz, being shot isn’t that big a deal, you know? Why couldn’t she carry on like the guys? And we get Patton being ‘the emotional one’. She’s emotionally compromised because a guy got killed in the mission at the start of the film who confessed to her as he lay dying that he’d been harboring feelings for her. This is compared to Cruise having his wife killed and used for the two of them to have a few emotional moments. Okay, why does the woman have to do the emotional connection parts? And how the hell is a work colleague dying meant to compare to your wife being killed? I mean, I can just about see it, but. And did we need this? Does the lady have to be upset because her work colleague had feelings for her? Couldn’t she just be upset because it was a person on her team that died and she was responsible for them?
Can we also have a moment to say how she gets ‘told off’ essentially for booting the assassin lady out of the window, but Cruise brings along a random Russian prisoner and that’s okay, he never gets called out on his mistakes, and Renner never gets yelled at for his blinking problem alerting the lady assassin to what’s going on?
Then we get Cruises’ ‘it’s my job to protect my wife’ bit near the end. Wow. I’m pretty sure since Cruise has been in prison and doing missions that meanwhile she’s been taking care of herself. Just saying.
The ‘bad guys’. Are foreign *sigh* and who knows what their motivations are? Our chief bad guy thinks nuclear war will make the world a better place. Okay, so he’s a nutter? What about those following him? Points for the weapons dealer who is on nobody’s side but his own and wouldn’t sell nuclear weapons to the nutter. Also points for some of the authorities not being completely stupid, although the guy in the Kremlin who keeps trying to investigate the mysterious dripping noise? Really?
That said. It was a fun film to watch. Cruise manages to have some amusing moments, even if he’s meant to be playing the hero figure, and I liked the running gag of technology failing. Pegg and Renner make this film though. They put the amusement and the heart into it. They both have fantastic moments and lines, and I loved the scenes they shared. Pegg is obviously meant to be the comic relief, but he does it so well that it never seems contrived. Renner plays the role of an Analyst and gets to point out some of the plot ridiculousness, but has some cracking one liners as well. Then, at the end, when Cruise and Patton’s last ‘emotional moment’ falls a little flat, Renner steps up and delivers a whole range of emotions as he tells Cruise about his role in the death of Cruise’s wife, is told that she isn’t dead, is accepted as a team member, and his face. Serious points to Renner.
And randomly. Tintin was one of the pre-film adverts and I spotted Moffat as one of the three screenwriters. I did not know this! Suddenly Tintin looks more interesting, heh.
Finally, I playing in the pit band (or orchestra) for three musicals when I was an undergrad and we always used the Mission Impossible theme tune for breaking down the set at the end of each performance. We had to turn the room back into a canteen and the only thing we were allowed to leave up was the main stage. Everything else had to be packed away. We rarely managed to get it done in the time it took for the theme to play out, but we had a damn good try and did manage it once or twice! Now I can’t hear that theme tune without wanting to leap to my feet and tidy up at super speed, which is amusing when it comes on in the middle of a film. Must. Stay. Seated. *grins*