GOOD NEW MOVIE: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- FALLOUT

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- FALLOUT (2018). Director: Christopher McQuarrie.

"We need people who care about the one life as much as they do about the millions."

This picture is sort of a sequel to the last MI film Rogue Nation, as villains and supporting characters from that film are re-introduced. Frankly, the first half of this movie just seems like one long, somewhat confusing chase scene with so many characters and factions that you need a scorecard, but none of that really matters, because in the second half the film really gets going. The set-up has Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Missions team attempting to disarm two nuclear bombs in India, but they not only have to find the bombs -- which are linked together in a non-physical sense-- but get the detonator from the bad guy so everything that needs to be done can be done at the precise instant required. Naturally there are all sorts of complications, with one creep trying to keep the team away from the bombs even as Ethan flies off in a helicopter after the man with the detonator. This leads into a copter battle in mid-air and a tense, exciting climax with the two opponents clashing high on top of a mountain. True, there is nothing here that hasn't been seen before, but it is nevertheless very well done.

Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill

The best thing about MI -- Fallout is the stunt work, with Cruise doing his own amazing stunts (one cast member never knew if Cruise would even be alive the next day; he broke his ankle at one point). I can see risking your life if you'\re really going to prevent a nuclear bomb from going off, but for a movie it seems a little foolhardy. However, Cruise, who is showing his age and beginning to resemble Dustin Hoffman, clearly wants to give his fans a big thrill and prove he's still "got it." This is Cruise's picture all the way, but he gets some good support from Henry Cavill [Man of Steel] , underplaying as a suspect American agent. Alec Baldwin [Blue Jasmine] offers his customary effective performance as the Secretary of State while Angela Bassett as a CIA chief is in bust-ass mode throughout.

Alec Baldwin and Cruise

Hunt is an admirable character, but I had to laugh when someone who worked on the film suggested that he's not a super-hero, but an ordinary guy. Sure, like James Bond is an "ordinary" guy.  Dodging bullets, surviving car and copter crashes against "impossible" odds, Hunt is as much a super-hero as Batman. As entertaining as this movie is, however, it and the other films in the series never achieve that classy, action-elegant level of the best of the James Bond movies. Younger viewers are more impressed by movies like this because they haven't seen as much to compare it with.

Verdict: If you liked the other MI movies you'll probably enjoy this one but you'll also forget it before you've even left the theater. ***.

THE SHADOW (1994)

THE SHADOW (1994). Director: Russell Mulcahy.

A very disappointing adaptation of the famous Shadow pulp character for the big screen is tricked up with special effects and the like but never has the right panache to bring it all to life. Not only is Mulcahy's direction off the mark, but David Koepp's script, although it has good aspects, is sometimes just too campy. (And why is the tragic death of a young sailor who is mind-controlled to jump off the Empire State Building practically treated as if it were comedy?) Why should anybody take the character seriously if the film's creators don't? In this The Shadow is actually Lamont Cranston, who was originally a fiendish, dissolute murderer and criminal before being transformed by an Oriental mentor into an agent of Good, the price for his redemption (of course his evil past makes him a bit of a hypocrite when confronting criminals). 

Alec Baldwin as The Shadow

One thing the picture gets right is the look of The Shadow; when Alec Baldwin [The Departed] puts on the cloak of his alter-ego, FX make his face elongate and change into the well-known hawk-like visage of the pulp hero. Baldwin is not at all bad in the role, but he's much too “contemporary” an actor to get across the proper thirties “feel.” The plot has to do with the emergence of Shiwan Khan (John Lone) the last living descendant of Genghis Khan, who wants Cranston to revert to his evil ways and help him conquer the world. To this end Khan needs a “barillium sphere” to build an atomic bomb. A clever if improbable bit has Khan somehow building a skyscraper which is not visible to anyone in Manhattan. A knife whose hilt comes alive and bites The Shadow, and a doom-trap involving a room full of rushing water, are among the better moments in the movie. A scene with a giant rolling time bomb is like something out of the Batman TV show, however, and there are other stupid moments. Tim Curry and Jonathan Winters (as Cranston's uncle) are excellent performers, but neither of them belong in this movie. Penelope Ann Miller is fine as Margo Lane, but Ian McKellen [X-Men] is wasted as her scientist father. Russell Mulcahy also directed Prayers for Bobby. 

Verdict: The really great Shadow movie has yet to be made, and the serial is lots more fun than this. **1/2. 

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- ROGUE NATION

Rebecca Ferguson and Sean Harris

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- ROGUE NATION (2015). Writer/director: Christopher McQuarrie.

"Join the IMF. See the world. On a monitor. In a closet." -- Benjy

The Secretary of State (Alec Baldwin) disbands the IMF (Impossible Missions Force) because he feels that the success of its missions is mostly due to luck. In the meantime IMF leader Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is made aware of a sinister organization called the Syndicate that seems comprised of supposedly dead agents from around the world. [In an interesting touch the message Hunt gets that gives him his assignment is actually from the Syndicate and blows up!] Ethan repeatedly encounters a woman named Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) who seems to be working for the Syndicate but saves Ethan's life on more than one occasion. An excellent scene occurs at the Vienna State Opera when a hit is planned on the Austrian chancellor during a performance of "Turandot" (Puccini's music is more effective as a backdrop for this than one might imagine). Later Ethan and his gang, including Benjy (Simon Pegg of Star Trek into Darkness) and Luther (Ving Rhames), invade a stronghold to acquire a ledger with important information -- in an underwater, underground vault where Hunt is rapidly running out of air -- and later must kidnap the prime minister of England to prevent disaster! The performances in this are good, although there's some overacting from Cruise and others at times, and it's interesting to note that the star seems to surround himself with better but less prepossessing actors. Ferguson, Pegg and Sean Harris as the evil Lane are all quite good. MI -- Rogue Nation has some outstanding and exciting sequences, but oddly, no real climax. As usual the movie respects the original TV series by more or less remaining true to its origins, which is more than you can say about The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and others.

Verdict: Memorable action thriller. ***.

BLUE JASMINE

Cate Blanchett

BLUE JASMINE (2013). Writer/Director: Woody Allen.

Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) once had a successful husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin of The Departed), a great life in New York, plenty of money, and pretty much never let her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), whom she finds declasse, forget it. But now her husband is a jail suicide, her life is in tatters, she's flat broke, and her stepson, Danny (Alden Ehreinreich), won't even talk to her. Who does Jasmine turn to, but Ginger in San Francisco, with whom she moves in, continuing their love/dislike relationship. Flashbacks show Jasmine's former life, and reveal that Ginger's ex-husband, Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), who invested with crooked Hal and lost all of his money, still believes that Jasmine knew everything the man was up to. Ginger has a boyfriend, Chili (Bobby Cannavale), but enters into an affair with Al (Louis C.K.), who turns out to be married, while Jasmine fights off advances by her dentist employer, and meets a great guy in widower Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard of Green Lantern), only to have ... well, that would be telling. Blue Jasmine is Woody Allen's [Shadows and Fog] best movie in years, a totally absorbing comedy-drama with expert thesping, a great cast, and a totally winning lead performance from Blanchett, who manages to make Jasmine sympathetic in spite of everything. The movie examines how we can love people we may not otherwise respect or approve of, and looks at how lives can go completely awry without any warning, especially when it comes to people left behind when their loved one is convicted of  various malfeasances. Blanchett won a completely deserved best actress Oscar, as well as several other best actress awards.

Verdict: Near-perfect with a fantastic Blanchett. ***1/2.

THE DEPARTED

THE DEPARTED (2006). Directed by Martin Scorsese.

Whatever strings were pulled behind the scenes, Martin Scorsese managed to pull off a real con on both the critics and public, for this picture – almost universally, if sometimes reservedly, acclaimed – is decidedly mediocre despite an excellent premise [borrowed from a foreign film] and some exciting sequences. Basically the mobster Frank Costello – more on that name later – plants an admiring young man whom he helped early in life (Matt Damon) in the Boston police department while the latter follow suit by depositing a young undercover officer (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the Costello camp. Late in the picture – when at last the suspense kicks in to a degree – these two men try to ferret out the identity of the other, with the expected violent results. The main trouble with the film is that this is supposed to be a thriller but the eternally over-rated Scorsese has never been in the same league as Alfred Hitchcock. There is only one stand-out sequence involving the bad guys closing in on a building wherein superior officer Martin Sheen is meeting with his Man On the Inside and a somewhat startling, well-handled homicide ensues. Otherwise the film isn't really awful, just a bit dull and predictable and certainly devoid of the tense and brilliant touches that a Hitchcock could have delivered.

Another problem is the screenplay and its utterly one-dimensional characters. Some older viewers may be confused in the beginning, remembering the real-life mobster Frank Costello who reigned in the fifties and sixties and wondering why the characters use cell phones throughout the movie and even refer to recent events. Jack Nicholson's “Frank Costello” may have been inspired by the real Costello, but clearly he is a different and fictional person of the 21st century. The “good guys” of the film casually use such terms as “nigger” and “faggot” but the superficial screenplay never explores the inferiority complexes that make people use such discriminatory words in the first place. [Unlike television, this movie basically depicts police officers as all being the desensitized bigots of earlier decades.] Jack Nicholson gives a showy, entertaining performance, but it is essentially another variation of The Joker. The younger actors, yelling out curse words and throwing tantrums, give good performances, but all the tiresome macho posturing is the easiest kind of acting to do. Since there are no real nuances to their characters, the actors aren't able to add subtleties to their performances, assuming this is something they're even capable of. That being said, Mark Wahlberg is very effective as an especially obnoxious police officer and Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin are as solid as ever. In the lead roles DiCaprio and Damon are impressive enough in their swagger but never quite overwhelmingly excellent.

Because of the rave reviews-- and then four Oscar wins -- people flocked to see The Departed. But I have no doubt many of them left the theater thinking that the latest episode of say, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit had a better story, more dimensional characters, and moved at a swifter and more slickly edited pace. Far from being “cutting edge,” Scorsese – and his adoring critics – are slightly out of date.

Verdict: They really don't make 'em like they used to. **.