IMAX tickets were booked months in advance and so come release day off I went with high hopes. Two hours later - utterly bored and dead inside - I reentered the auditorium and turned to my mates for a group mauling of the film. To my surprise they all really enjoyed it. Deja bloody Vu. Against popular public opinion I detested Mission Impossible 3. The public were wrong then, and they were wrong now. I’ll tell you why.
What's been the deciding influential factor with the best and worst Bond films of the last 15 years? Its not been the lead actor, it's been the Directors. Goldeneye and Casino Royale? Both excellent and directed by Martin Campbell. The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day and Quantum all ranging from meh to awful thanks to largely unknown or untested directors.
Likewise, look at Bourne; it was only when Paul Greengrass took charge that they took the world by storm (is there another director with Doug Liman's skill for sucking the life out of an interesting concept - Jumper, Mr & Mrs Smith, Bourne Identity)? The importance of the director appears to have finally hit home to the Broccolis with the appointment of Sam Mendes, who on paper is shaping a potentially classic Bond. With Spielberg, Tarantino and Nolan among the many big-name directors wanting to make a Bond let's hope that Skyfall heralds a new era of director-driven installments.
So how does this relate to Mission Impossible? Name anther franchise where every installment has had such an interesting choice of director - Brian De Palma, John Woo, JJ Abrams, Brad Bird. I enjoyed MI1, it was a classy enough thriller with plenty of signature De Palma strange angle cinematography. MI2 left me rather unmoved at the time - I think I was expecting another Face Off. The third installment entered development hell and the story goes that Cruise, with no director but a picture ready to go, sat down and sailed through every boxset of J.J. Abrams’ Alias. He then picked up the phone to Abrams and asked him to “do an Alias with MI3.” Well it was mission accomplished with MI3 - it replicated an episode of Alias perfectly. That was fine for the majority of people who had never heard of, let alone seen, the show. I however was a massive fan so I was nay impressed with the laziness of MI3 in addition to its flagrant waste of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as principle baddie. MI4, after a promising start, had zero excitement and the most hollow bad guy ever committed to screen.
What excites me about the Mission Impossible concept is the bravery to invite a very different director in for each installment to imprint their own style upon the franchise. Referring back to the wannabe Bond directors, just imagine the next three Bonds directed by Nolan, Spielberg and Tarantino? All would be superbly unique but equally as brilliant. Cruise and his producers have been brave enough to gamble on this concept but the ingredients have, mostly, not yielded the expected results. Bird's gravest offense with MI4 is the failure to install any kind of unique personal style on the picture, save for an 'Incredibles' like corridor scene. In his defense this was his first live action picture and with Abrams producing, in a stylistic sense we essentially got a direct sequel to MI3.
With the gift of hindsight and with the director-focused mission in mind, John Woo’s Mission Impossible 2 emerges as by far and away the best of the franchise. When you think Woo you think slow-mo, ridiculous mid-gunfight-flips, lengthy set pieces, doves and yet more mid action slo-mo. All are present and accounted for in MI2. He made the picture his own. Other superior elements include an inspired turn by Anthony Hopkins as Ethan's boss:
Ethan in reference to Nyah: “She's got no training for this.”
Hopkins: “What? To go to bed with a man and lie to him? She's a woman. She's got all the training she needs.”
Why was Hopkins never brought back as the boss? Instead we got the charisma vacuum that was Laurence Fishburne followed by a ‘am I really supposed to care when he snuffs it’ cameo from Tom Wilkinson.
Sean Ambrose was a great bad guy. No, really. When you reflect on MI2 you’ll instinctively think rock climbing, doves and slo-mo bikes but actually there was a half decent plot buried in there which even had the already legendary Brendan Gleeson in a supporting cast role. I dare you to explain the plot of MI3 and 4 (Abrams' genius with Alias was that it often revolved around a plotless plot, trippy I know). The best bad guys are the evil versions of the good guy - 006 (Goldeneye), Magneto, Arnie’s Terminator 2, Venom (more the character then the limp film version), The Joker - and so in a rogue IMF agent we got a quite nasty and phlegmy Sean Ambrose.
Plus Han Zimmer's soundtrack is pumping! The Mission Impossible theme tune is phenomenal, used well in MI1 by Danny Elfman it was cranked up Limp Bizkit style for the sequel by Zimmer. Check out the track Bare Island, put it up full blast and tell me it didn’t get your heart pumping. MI3 and 4, both scored by the spectacular Michael Giacchino, in my opinion the best composer working right now (see Star Trek and Up), delivered a thoroughly flat score for both. My theory on scores that applies 99% of the time is that the quality of the music is a direct reflection on the quality of the film. An artist can only paint what’s inspiring them. And so with Giacchino - he had limited inspiration to work with in the last two installments leading to a criminal waste of sixty four genius seconds of classic theme music.
The set pieces rocked. Yes, they were entirely implausible, it is Mission Impossible remember. The fact that Cruise has messy shaggy long hair one minute while back flipping and magical silky locks of perfection once landed is not the point. Or maybe it is. MI2 is up for there for the highest number of errors in any film. Perfect. It gives you plenty of talking points for the pub afterwards which is exactly what this sort of film is supposed to generate. “There’s no way the Audi and the Porsche would lock and spin together like that!” “One minute the bike had a shot out windshield, then in the next scene it’s back!” I have it on good authority that a certain Chris Nolan cares not too much for continuity, he believes that if you have the scene and the flow is working then stick with it and the audience will forgive any inaccuracies. Put another way, John Woo and Chris Nolan share unagi.
And let us talk about Cruise. He was obviously responsible for demoting Renner to nothing more then a bit part rent boy in MI4 for fear of sharing the limelight. We all know that Cruise has an ego, he is not a team actor which causes an issue for a supposedly team-orientated film franchise. MI1 cleverly dealt with this by killing off the team in the first ten minutes. MI3 and 4 gave us the most vanilla of spy teams since the 00 agents that got killed off early doors in The Living Daylights. MI2 balanced Cruise’s ego perfectly by having Luther back in fine form “That punk put a hole in my Versace” seconds before blasting said punk off a pier with a grenade launcher. The annoying Aussie did his job (i.e. fly the chopper) while the aforementioned Hopkins was a powerful enough presence to be believable as Hunt's boss. Nyah appropriately went from femme fatale to damsel in distress in a slo-mo dove-framed blink of an eye. Maybe the pulling power of the Cruiser is fading but if you’re going to make a Cruise film, make a Cruise film. Don’t be ashamed and try to hide what it is by brining in a bunch of pointless extras to disguise the ego ala MI3 and 4.
And before you shout Pegg in my face, if you actually think about it, he really wasn’t that funny. I love the man but come on, be honest with yourself. MI2 in fact has the funniest line of the entire franchise, Hunt with a straight face in response to Nyah entering Ambrose’s compound: “We just rolled up a snowball and tossed it into hell. Now lets see what chance it has.”
I should have convinced you of MI2‘s superior virtues by now. In the unlikely event that you're still wavering I do have an ace up my sleeve. It needs no explaining, instead simply search for - Tom Cruise Ben Stiller Mission Impossible Parody - on YouTube and enjoy.
Let's recap, then. Director's flair? Present. Barmy action? Tick. Cruise being Cruise? Absolutely. If you wanted to sit down and discuss the virtues of MI1 as a better constructed film, I might be hard pressed to silence you. But in terms of what the Mission Impossible franchise goal was and should be about, MI2 is leagues ahead.
Tom - if you ever happen to read this - step back, take a deep breath, re-watch Woo’s installment and appreciate its many fine qualities. Then ditch Abrams, raise the bar and take on a curve ball director for MI5 (that title might need reworking). Guy Ritchie? Steven Soderbergh? Tarantino?!
Seriously - imagine Tarantino doing Cruise........
