The appearance of Mission:
Impossible III, the latest chapter in what looks like yet another franchise
series, indicates that global warming even affects the cinema. With the first
blockbuster of the season opening the first week in May, summer now begins much
earlier than in the past, which means that perhaps eventually Hollywood
will create an endless season of blockbusters, with no interruptions for cooler
weather or anything remotely resembling intelligent cinema. Despite the usual
exaggerated publicity, the many widely reported appearances of its star in all
sorts of contexts outside the film, and the early speckling of exclamation
marks in the reviews, the movie itself seems, if possible, even more boring and
idiotic than its predecessors.
That idiocy begins with the climactic sequence, which also
opens the movie, bookending a long flashback that
explains the whole sorry business. Strapped to a chair in a thriller tradition
that probably dates from the Victorian era, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) must sweat
his way through the usual slow count to 10, while the villain, Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), holds a gun to his
fiancรฉe’s head, threatening to kill her unless Cruise provides him some
necessary information about something called “Rabbit’s Foot.” Although
presumably some sort of weapon, Rabbit’s Foot turns out to be the silliest and
least convincing McGuffin since North By Northwest, an object that exists merely to propel a flimsy
plot.
The idiocy continues in a furious fight between Cruise and
Hoffman, in which they take turns throwing each through walls and windows, roll
around a great deal, and generally beat the hell out of each other. Despite the
ferocity of their struggle, the antagonists, one a short, muscular fellow, the
other a short, pudgy fellow, look so silly and so incompetent at their task
that after a while the long battle looks a bit like midget wrestling — a
choreographed, scripted, overwrought, and utterly fake contest between two
diminutive opponents.
Almost nothing else in the picture makes any more sense than
that opening and closing confrontation. The flashback shows Tom Cruise somewhat
hesitantly accepting one of those familiar invitations to accomplish some
extraordinarily complicated and entirely unlikely assignment. Retired from the
famous IMF, engaged to Julia (Michelle Monaghan), Cruise expresses some initial
reluctance about embarking once again on a journey into danger, stunt work,
and, well, impossibility. Naturally, however, he rejoins the old gang in a
complicated caper to foil the plans of the sinister Davian,
and the alleged fun begins.
The rest of the movie proceeds with so much ersatz
excitement that, paradoxically, it creates absolute boredom. A seemingly
endless sequence of fights, shootouts, vehicle chases, explosions, precipitous
falls from great heights, leaps across the canyons between skyscrapers, and so
on tends to bludgeon the viewer into insensibility.
A few moments, no matter their entire absence of
intelligence or meaning, enliven the whole sorry business. The obligatory high-tech
digital gadgetry of the IMF, much advanced since the ancient days of the 1960s
television show, now and then generates some interest. An otherwise
incomprehensible kidnapping of Hoffman from a party at the Vatican,
for example, features the team’s ingenious manufacture of a Philip Seymour
Hoffman mask — worn by Cruise, of course — and the hero’s subsequent
impersonation of the villain, suggesting some ironic identification of the two
opposing figures. (I don’t think it will be a hit at Halloween.)
The script’s generally perfunctory attitude toward its plot
and people suggests a certain contempt for both the
movie and its audience. It hardly encourages anything beyond the most
superficial sort of attention to the material and certainly exerts hardly any
effort at making its characters at all believable, or even particularly
entertaining. The shallow characterizations, the absence of convincing
motivation, the laborious attempts at wit, the
self-conscious dialogue all demonstrate the sterile and mechanical approach of
the director and the screenwriters.
Finally, despite his triumph in Capote and at the Academy Awards, Philip Seymour Hoffman exhibits
little of the intensity, power, or simple credibility of much of his previous
work. His cardboard character convinces no one of his reality, and his
struggles with Cruise rapidly turn comical. No doubt a handsome paycheck will
negate the embarrassment he should rightly feel about the movie, the character,
and his performance.
Mission: Impossible III, directed by J.J. Abrams, is playing at
Culver Ridge 16, Pittsford Cinemas, Henrietta 18, Webster 12, Tinseltown, Greece
Ridge 12, and Eastview 13
This article appears in May 10-16, 2006.
