Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Dustin: 3.5 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.5 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is about International Monetary Fund secret agent Tom Cruise, who must circumnavigate the globe for action to happen. Director Christopher McQuarrie said, “Action!” and action just happened. Some action leads to other action. The plot was almost as hard to follow as Incoherent Vice. I can explain the overall story, but I had a hard time following it, not always sure why we were in a new location, what Tom Cruise was trying to accomplish during the underwater level.

Nick: Hunt (hard H sound) went to those new locations because that is where the Syndicate would be on their next mission. The underwater scene was pretty silly. They have all this tactical armor, but they don’t have a piece of equipment to help extend your stay underwater? But it was fun…

Dustin: The movie was basically about Tom Cruise trying to prove the existence of a secret organization, the specter-like Syndicate. He teams up with an MI6 agent who is under deep cover within the Syndicate, and together they are trying to destroy it.

I guess I shouldn’t complain about realism in a movie like this, but I was wondering what a British guy (Simon Pegg) was doing working at CIA headquarters. This wasn’t a comedy like Spy, where you could overlook Jason Statham’s presence there. I also laughed when Alec Baldwin criticised the IMF for doing the sort of things the CIA does.

Nick: I recently showed Team America: World Police to someone who had never even heard of the movie! Alec Baldwin’s pleas to the council reminded me of one of Alec Baldwin’s many speeches in TA:WP. In other words I laughed whenever he was on screen.  

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol was such a fantastic action film it’s hard not to compare this semi-lacklustre film to its predecessor. I don’t think any aspect of the film is equal to or better than M:I-GP. There was a great comedy bit of Tom Cruise being forced into action after being dead for a minute. He is forced to drive a car in a high speed pursuit but keeps crashing into everything as Simon Pegg sits shotgun freaking out about the whole situation. Immediately after the car chase, Hunt jumps onto a motorcycle and is able to ride it without fault, and although it was a very entertaining scene I’m a little wary about the amount of sense it makes. Wouldn’t he still be a shitty driver but on a much more dangerous vehicle?

Did that make sense? I haven’t had my coffee yet

Dustin: Makes more sense than the movie.

The reason huge stars like Cruise are cast in movies like these is because we’re supposed to think this is happening to Tom Cruise--it doesn’t matter what the character’s name is--and therefore we’re supposed to care more.

Having said that, I actually like Tom Cruise. He certainly gets a lot of undeserved hate for jumping on Oprah’s couch 10 years ago. It’s hard to believe he’s 53. I’m 21 years younger than him, but my body more closely resembles a 53-year-old’s, while his looks more like mine in my mid-20s (feels so long ago). He also has a young face. I think he could continue being action man for a few more years. I wouldn’t say he has a wide range, though. He’s always Tom Cruise (except for his brilliant role in Tropic Thunder).

Nick: I actually loved it when he jumped on that couch because celebrities normally have PR people to control them, but he was like, Fuck it, I’m jumping on this goddamn couch! Interviews with celebs are often boring, simple answers that make the celeb more endearing, but not that interview--it still gets brought up 10 years after the incident. That’s pretty crazy!

I was kind of upset about Jeremy Renner’s whittled down role. He was awesome in the last one and his character’s story was great, but here he seems like Hawkeye: a pretty useless member of the team.

Dustin: Like you said, the movie was pretty fun. It reminded me of a Pierce Brosnan-era Bond film. A little over-the-top and contrived, but chock-full of imaginative action set-pieces.

Edge of Tomorrow

Dustin: 4.5 of 5 stars Nick: 4.5 of 5 stars Average: 4.5 of 5 stars (Tweety canary)

Dustin: Edge of Tomorrow begins after aliens have invaded the earth and humanity has combined forces to battle the tentacled monsters. Tom Cruise plays Major William Cage, an American military officer who serves as a PR flack for the global United Defense Forces and goes to great length to avoid actual combat. One day, he is thrown to the front lines in the war’s decisive battle, but quickly dies. He then wakes up the day before the battle, stuck in a personal time warp, forced to relive the same sequence of events over and over and over.

Dustin: So, Nick, what did you think of Groundhog Day 2: Edge of Tomorrow?

Nick: Matrix 4: Edge of Tomorrow was the most fun I’ve had in quite sometime at the movies watching a mega-budget Hollywood film.

Dustin: The movie was really well done. It starts with some B-roll of battles, war-torn Europe, government figures talking on TV, all with an alien invasion plot. I was thinking, This is the movie Ed Wood would make if he were alive today. But I was quickly found I had underestimated this movie. The film set the tone very well, the action scenes were well executed, and the special effects were quite lively.

Nick: Humor was alive and well too. This movie did a fantastic job of balancing light with dark, unlike many Hollywood films of the past few years. The editing is Oscar worthy! I have never said that about a film with this large of a budget.

Dustin: The humor made this movie a joy to watch. The humor is in the same vein as Groundhog Day. A man is stuck in a personal time warp, he knows everything that’s about to happen, and treats it all with a large dose of irony. Cruise also has a similar character arc as Bill Murray in Groundhog Day--a self-absorbed jerk who eventually begins to care about the people around him and learns a sense of duty.

Nick: Cruise was self-absorbed, but I disagree that he didn’t care. It only took him two times dying to try and save the fat guy (Tony Way, Ali G Indahouse) from a large plane landing on top of him. Edge of Tomorrow does a good job recycling material without ever getting old. The meaning behind the material always changes: either intimidating, funny, or (for Cruise) slightly annoying.

Dustin: The movie had a semi-sweet love subplot. It is pretty toned-down, which is good because it could easily weigh down this brisk, two-hour film. There’s a scene where he’s making coffee for his ally, Rita (Emily Blunt), a fierce sergeant who was once stuck in her own time warp and understands Cruise’s predicament. He knows precisely how much sugar she likes. The fact he knows that is such a deft way of showing his feelings without a word of mushy dialogue.

Nick: The film has some really dark elements as well. Rita probably kills Cage (Cruise) more times than the aliens, known as Mimics. She just pulls out a gun with no remorse and caps him in the head.  

Dustin: The movie masterfully foreshadowed her character. At the very beginning, Cage, while pushing for support for the war, mentions how one woman, with virtually no training, was able to kill 100 Mimics in her first day of battle using the bionic armor. Of course, he had no way of knowing she had lived that one day a thousand times. He only knew the results.

Nick: Bill Paxton continues being awesome in every movie I’ve ever seen him in! His delivery of lines as Master Sergeant Farell is impeccable. Every one (even when repeated) made me laugh.

THE FOLLOWING SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS

Dustin: Do you have any criticisms of this film?

Nick: I saw the film less than 24 hours ago, so there has not been much time to think on the ending. But after first viewing, it left me with a sour taste. Obviously not to the extent of some other endings as I still rate it high, but that ending will take away from the film (in my opinion) on future viewings.  All the weight and importance of the plot is somewhat taken away by that ending. Right before the end, Cage swims deep underwater to drop a load of grenades into the Omega, which is the collective brain that controls all the Mimics. Cage shows the Alpha Mimic he has all the pins from the grenades as the grenades float down toward the Omega, and I rolled my eyes. The film had been so unique and clever up to that point. The shot of him letting go of the pins and the Alpha’s reaction plays as somewhat ridiculous. Edge of Tomorrow was on the verge of being an all time great Hollywood film, but the last 10 minutes has me rethinking.  

Dustin: I had a problem with the epilogue. I wanted the heroes to live, but I didn’t quite understand it. After he destroyed the Omega, the day started over again, but without the Omega. This made sense, but why did the day start differently for Cruise? This time, it had him properly reporting for duty, rather than packed in the luggage in handcuffs as the day had always started previously. Did resetting the day also change the outcome of the previous day? Couldn’t quite figure that out. Maybe Cruise inherited the Omega’s ability to master time, and went back even further. But this wasn’t established, and it didn’t seem to be what happened. (I was just trying to explain a plot hole.)

Nick: When I say the last 10 minutes, I was including the epilogue in that. Right when Cruise pulls the pins and on left me unsatisfied and slightly confused. I don’t mind heroes living, but the way it was done felt silly to me. As well with the pop song that plays with the credits, which starts immediately after Cruise smiles in the last shot. Ending with that made the film mean so much less. For the first time during the film it actually felt like a crowd pleasing Hollywood film that wants to leave people feeling chipper! It occurs to me that maybe the creators were forced to make the characters live.

Dustin: It’s based on the Japanese book All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. I haven’t read it, but I’d be interested to know if the source material ended the same way.

I don’t think the epilogue detracted from what came before it per se, but it just left me confused to the logistics. It appears to me to be a plot hole.

END OF SPOILERS

Nick: Edge of Tomorrow is a fantastic film that will please sci-fi fans as well as anybody that might have some hang ups about Tom Cruise.

Dustin: And if you don’t like Tom Cruise, in this film you can see him get shot in the head a hundred times. Everyone wins!