Mission Impossible 2

After the first installment was a commercial and a critical success, Ethan Hunt came back to the movie screens for another episode of "Mission Impossible" and since Tom Cruise is very involved with the project being a producer as well, he hired no other then Mr Hong Kong cinema himself, John Woo, to direct the sequel, was it a success ? let's dig deeper.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is the new leader of IMF, and while on vacation doing some extreme sports thing he gets contacted by the Agency, and during a meeting in an exotic location Mission Commander Swanbeck (Anthony Hopkins) informs him that some prototype virus "Chimera" had been stolen by his arch rival Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), and that his mission "should he choose to accept it" is to retrieve the virus and it's antidote, he might choose two teem members and the third must be Nyah Nordof-Hall (Thandie Newton), a woman who had a relationship with Ambrose and well trained in her field.

From Spain to Australia, back to America, and again, the chase between Hunt and Ambrose goes firece, while both fight to get their hands on Chimera, a love triangle forms between the three of them, and indeed it has an effect on the progression as anytime the professional and the moral and the sentimental gets mixed, you always know in your heart that the good guys win, but at what cost, to themselves and humanity.

A highly anticipated sequel, turned out to be a mere money maker, John Woo lost his mojo when he moved to America and he never got it back, he surely made a lots of money, but he did a big harm to his filmography, an American action hero is not as absolute as a hong kong one, and besides, the story doesn't justify the stunts, which are the true force of this movie, and the two most important ones, the vilain and the love interest are far from convincing, Thandie Newton was a clear miscasting, and Scott could be a goold vilain would his character be drawn better, but again, this is a star vehicle for Tom Cruise, who shines in shades and on motorcycles, doing stuff that is illegitmate outside of Hong Kong, i mean at one point, a white dove flies out of nowhere for god's sake ! but it was a good summer movie, which a lot of movie fans wanted to like, and the remainder is a couple of mountain climbing stunts, and some scenes that look like the prototype of the far superiour "The Dark Knight", indeed at the heart of a good action movie are story and character, and character is exactly what this movie lacks.

Minority Report

In a near future, crime fighting agencies have a major asset, they have a means to know about and prevent a crime before it even happens, this is the mission of a Precrime a government agency led by John Anderton (Tom Cruise) who has achieved remarkable results in the district of Columbia, which is supposed to encourage the whole country to endorse this method which combines police efficiency, high technology and parapsychologic powers focused around the powers of three oracles, the twins and Agatha (Samantha Morton).

Precrime being the center of a major media attention, the department of justice dispatches Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) an ambitious suit with enough authority and insolence to irritates the established order, Anderton is not happy because he has skeletons in his closet caused by a close family member of his involved in a tragic happening, which jeopardized his stability, and made him prone to dishonourable behaviors.

To make everything worse, John is the next target of his team, since He is about to be part of a crime, now this can be either a ploy to take over his service, or that he has good reasons to go on the other side of the law, this is the central conflict of «Minority Report»

Anything Spielberg does has the potential to attract movie audiences and movie lovers alike, because the man has the hidden talent to make movies that attract both, in his first collaboration with Tom Cruise, and over a script based on a short story by the legendary Philip.K Dick it even has the potential to become a cultural event, something that would be in the same drawer with «Blade Runner» as one of the Sci-Fi classics, this movie doesn't manage to do so, but It fails honorably, because it doesn't laugh at iteslf, and it respects the audience's brains.

Anderton quest to discharge himself from this criminal involvment that did not occur leads him to realise that this whole mess is political and involving very influencial people, as he learns from his mentor Max Von Sydow (Director Lamar Burgess), who was the mastermind behind Precrime, and as we follow him through a futuristic Washington D.C, we have a glimpse of the future without the cheap tricks that we became tired of, but in it's essence it's a thriller, it doesn't really dig deep in the soil of big brother issues, and private life, , Anderton wants to know the truth, to do so he crosses the middle line between good and evil back and fourth, and visits the underworld and it's identity concealing technologies to do so.

When I say «fails honourably» it still means that it is head and shoulders above stuff like «I.Robot» or even «A.I» by the same director, the way Anderton uses the interface of Precrime was as overused as the Matrix's bullet time effect, We wish it would dig deeper into the territory of the conflicting man-machine relationship, and how new technologies are altering our free will, but this movie is here to entertain, and it does it brilliantly, it is not the best Spielberg but it's quite good, and it gives him another success to add to the many he had in his rich creative life, casting choices are good, the cinematography splendid, we just hope that summer blockbusters with A-List stars had this quality controls, but when you see «Transformers 2» being so popular while being so bad, you wonder if American movies have went again through the downward spiral of lucrative mediocrity, and even if it does, we'd still have the underground Sci-Fi movies.

Collateral

Some movies belong to the night, they happen in the night, and they are just this enveloping darkness where a lot of things are possible, which are not possible otherwise, and "Collateral" is an extreme example in that sense because it happens during one night in January 2004.

Max (Jamie Fox) is a middle age humble cab driver in Los Angeles, he is a regular guy, with hopes and dreams, which will probably never happen, one day he picks a client, a beautiful district attorney (Jada Pinkett) and gets along well with her, not knowing that this cab ride will change his life.

Somehow he crosses paths with a ruthless killer Vincent (Tom Cruise) who is in town for some "cleaning jobs" and who convinces him to be his driver, of course a lot happens, because max has to deal with his fears, his lack of initiative, his obsessive mother, and of course learns a lot in the contact of somebody as Vincent, who is as methodical as a killing machine, all that happening in the awesomely filmed LA night.

First of all, let me say this, I'm a big fan of Micheal Mann and i don't hide it, this man made "Heat" another big LA film, and if you can have Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro on screen, then you are our hero, and I admire his pioneering work in the use of big digital cameras, which
yield magnificent results especially during night scenes, and this movie is a night movie by excellence, and it's a movie so faithful to that esoteric spirit of Midnight to 3AM

Tom Cruise, as much as you can blame him for carrying his big sientologist smile on screens for two decades, is as brilliant as he was in "Magnolia", his interpretation and his physical changes are impressive, he is exactly the night fox of this movie, agile, predator, and efficient, as you would expect them, and within the tiny space in the cab, a really psychological duel faces him to Max, duel of motives, duel of Live in the moment versus carefully planned, and you see Max
toughening during the movie to the point he impresses even himself.

All the classical themes of the night are present too, the loneliness, the Jazz, the nightclubs,the silcnce, the meditation, and whatever the curtains of night fall one, and the movie ends in a way mirroring it's beginning, the terrible oneliness of a town of fifty millions people with all that abundance in everything, except maybe human warmth.

As far as I am concerned this movie is part of an LA trilogy, started with Heat, and i hope that Micheal Mann will close it with a worthy third episode, because some movies are characters, and because catching the spirit of a city is as difficult as describing an intense multilevel feeling, but this is a movie that has a finger on the pulse of what is probably the most fascinating city in pop culture, and that's why it would be almost a sin to miss it.

Released: 2004, Origin: US

Mission Impossible (1996)

If you are like me, then you have probably watched Mission : Impossible as a series, matter of fact i did not watch the original one, but the twenty years after version when Jim Phelps got old and cool, so in the mid nineties there was a movie based on a serie (loosely based i may say) starring Tom Cruise, and directed by Brian DePalma.

So when an iconic director and an A-list Star join forces, with such co-stars as Jon Voight, Ving Rhames Jean Reno and Vanessa Redgrave, the movie goers shall pay attention, and their attention was ... rewarded since M:I was probably one of the best action movies of the nineties.

Ethan Hunt is a member of the IMF (impossible mission force) who are dispatched to Prague, to uncover a mole selling a high end document to some international arm dealer, of course the deal goes wrong with many people killed and Ethan Hunt taking the blame.

After a brilliant escape Ethan Hunt along with some remaining team members and new hired experts attempts a very daring heist in one of the most secure locations in the world, and contacts the arm dealer himself to find out surprising revelations about the mole, his fellow team members, and the IMF.

This movie is like Kill Bill in many regards, the plot line is used to tie impressive action figures, and brilliant filmmaking by DePalma, the film is not really convincing and relies on suspension of desbelief, but neither was the series anyways, and it was part of it's charm (now if you can believe that it's actually possible to make a mask that imitates excatly the face of a person ....), but that's Mission Impossible, Impossible is even in the title, so you can't act like you did not know.

Fans or the real series might feel alienated by the portrayal of Jim Phelps by Jon Voight, but then again this movie is in many cases a reboot as our fellow comic book lovers like to call it, and it's part of the enjyoment, another part are the exotic shooting locations, Prague, London, Virginia, and France to name a few, and the international cast, especially the use of french actors Jean Reno, and Emanuelle Beart.

So yes, this is a good movie, and still relevant today, it sadly did rise the anticipations for the second installment, which turned out to be more profitable, and really a disgrace to the spirit of the series, with the oh my god so boring Thandie Newton as the female lead, and the once good director John Woo, and his pigeons coming out of nowhere.