Category: Tom Cruise

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II

By Marc S. Sanders

Mission: Impossible II is undoubtedly the weakest installment of Tom Cruise’s series, adapted from the classic tv show. Action Director John Woo is normally regarded as “ACTION DIRECTOR JOHN WOO” because he can only direct action. He hardly ever directs story. There’s no dimension to his characters and nothing intriguing. It’s all just glitz and neon colors in his cinematography. No weight at stake in Action Director John Woo’s action.

A third act fist fight between Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and a very, very uninteresting villain played by Dougray Scott gets very tiresome, very, very quickly. Punch, kick, tackle, twirl, take off your jacket, get up in very slowwwwww motion, throw off your sunglasses, and do it again and again and one more time.

The MacGuffin of the picture is a virus and the anti-virus. Hunt recruits a sexy thief played by Thandie Newton to infiltrate Dougray Scott, her ex-boyfriend seeking to cash in on the prize at hand. Somewhere, lost in Robert Towne’s script, Scott’s character gets wise to the fact that of all the “M:I” agents out there, Ethan Hunt is the one onto him even though they never come in contact with one another until the middle section of the film is complete. So, the bad guy, at times, disguises himself as Hunt. Screenwriter Robert Towne thought he’d get one over on the audience with the disguise twists that the M:I franchise is known for. Sadly, it’s not subtle enough in this picture. All twists can be foreshadowed as early as the opening credits actually.

Action Director John Woo really fails with this effort. He makes a terrible habit of amping up the gloss of his film with an abundance of slowwwwww motion actions and reactions to accompany a mostly mandolin soundtrack from Hans Zimmer. Beautiful set pieces of music. Though none of it belongs in this film. Zimmer’s work here is better suited for something more genuinely romantic and exotic, without the revving motorcycle rides and bare-knuckle brawls in the final act of the film.

In addition, Action Director John Woo is not given much action to “action direct.” There’s a lot of bland talking in Towne’s script. So much so that we finally arrive at what the film promises, only it’s very late in Act 2, and then drags on very slowwwwwwwly in Act 3.

For a brief stint early on, you get the impression that Cruise is adopting a flirtatious James Bond approach with Newton’s character. They hide away cuddled in an empty bathtub and quickly bed one another, but Towne writes no sexual innuendo to go with Cruise & Newton’s grins, or their shiny, moisturized complexions.

There’s no humor either. There’s really no reason to like Ethan Hunt here. He has nothing to say. All he does is walk in slowwwww motion in response to Action Director John Woo.

Cruise, again as producer, makes the mistake of only allowing his hand in the cookie jar. No one gets to do anything of great importance except him. A team is assembled to just watch Tom Cruise play and walk slowwwwwly. Cruise hired his own fan club for this film, including Anthony Hopkins. Now here’s a charming chap playing Hunt’s supervisor. You see him appear for the first time early on. He returns in the epilogue, and when the film has concluded you realize that Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins next to nothing to do, really. He doesn’t debate or joke with Cruise. He, like most of the cast of the first two M:I films, just tells Hunt who to meet next. What potential for a great character played by a marvelous character actor and it’s regrettably squandered away.

Fortunately, the approach of the subsequent M:I films went in different direction following Action Director John Woo’s contribution. All elements of this short-changed story were abandoned for better material from better directors to later come.

WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005)

By Marc S. Sanders

There’s a harsh reality to science fiction in the 21st century.  When the aliens arrive on Earth, a little girl will ask her dad “What is it?  Is it terrorists?”  Steven Spielberg’s interpretation of H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds covered that territory when it was released four brisk years after 9/11.  All these years later and there’s still some legitimacy to that sadly reasonable question.  I find it interesting that one of the most pioneering novels in sci fi was published just ahead of the twentieth century paving the way for endless approaches to alien arrivals and attacks on Earth.  When Spielberg approaches it on his third try, the trope may have been done to death, but now the reality of the response is updated and all too real, and brutally disturbing.

Tom Cruise is the lead in this adaptation, and he is arguably in the most vulnerable role of his career.  He plays a storage bin dock loader, only regarded as a half caring deadbeat and divorced dad to his teenage son (Justin Chatwin) and 10-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning). After his ex-wife (Miranda Otto) drops the kids off for the weekend, there’s an uncomfortable game of catch in the backyard followed by the beginning of the mayhem.  What appears like a lightning storm evolves into dead batteries and no electricity along with odd wind currents and hammering echoes.  When the people all around the main characters in their New York neighborhood get vaporized, then naturally their first instinct is to think it’s terrorists.  In today’s science fiction, terrorists are real and aliens are not.

Later, once the extra terrestrials (not the friendly kind who consume Reece’s pieces) have viciously introduced themselves, Spielberg’s film resorts to demonstrating mass exodus of the people of Earth.  Military units advise folks to “keep movin’.”  When the attacks happen, people scatter in different directions.  When a ferry is leaving the mainland, helpless folks rush for the dock, desperately climbing over the gates and leaving loved ones behind.  Spielberg hasn’t forgotten about the unlawful occupations from world history.  He simply applies it to a Tom Cruise action piece.

Tim Robbins shows up as a crazed man hiding in a farmhouse basement with a shotgun ready to begin a one-man revolution.  Cruise tries to contain the hysteria.  A scene like this could have had Nazis or aliens circumventing on the floor above, as the central characters remain as quiet as the Jews used to do in the basement below.  The parallels are eerily the same. 

Still, I respect the reality of the piece.  For one thing, much of the film, scripted by Josh Friedman and David Koepp is pulled right from H.G. Wells’ pages, including the nice and tidy ending that eventually arrives.  Don’t knock it.  That’ how Wells wrote the story to begin with.  Spielberg and crew don’t invent their own new image of the invaders.  They are still the tall three-legged tripods towering over the people of Earth and blasting them with their “heat rays.”  My favorite touch of this film is using Morgan Freeman’s vocals as the bookended narrator reciting Wells’ novel text, nearly word for word.  It’s a welcome salute to the memorable radio show that Orson Welles lent to the story decades before. 

I consider this adaptation of War Of The Worlds to be an observational picture or a reactionary film.  Cruise is not super skilled with fighting techniques and weapons handling.  All he can do is watch and react.  He’s an everyman here, which is actually quite unusual for him when you gloss over his resume.  This is not Maverick or Ethan Hunt: Superspy.  His purpose is to watch and return his kids to their mother in Boston, assuming she is still alive.  The success of the mission here only depends on getting the kids back to mom. 

Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin go against the grain of so many other Spielberg kid characters.  They are not intuitive or inventive.  Especially for Fanning’s character, she is just a scared little girl.  Not a Goonie and not like Gertie, who is scared for the sake of humor with precocious one liners.  If aliens were attacking the Earth, this is how my kid would react. 

Once it is established that this movie is a Spielberg running man film, then you may be grateful for the realistic mentality of the story’s community.  You’ll also appreciate the amazing set pieces accompanied by John Williams’ original score that plays like a drive-in monster movie or a Twilight Zone episode.  The aftermath of a plane crash on a Jersey suburban neighborhood is very convincing.  A runaway train set ablaze intrudes upon the cast with great surprise.  A cracked piece of concrete that gets swallowed up below only to immediately vomit a tripod in the air for instant attack is eye popping. 

War Of The Worlds is a well-crafted film, and the thought was definitely invested in its approach ahead of making it.  Yet, I won’t say it’s fun escapism.  It’s a reminder of the unrelenting realities we live in now.  Sadly, it’s not reaching to say that maybe we live in a time where it is in fact every person for themselves.  Even Cruise’s son insists on going off on his own, abandoning both him and his sister with nary a care at all.  Unlike Close Encounters or E.T., there’s not much to laugh or grin at in this Spielberg alien film.

The 2005 adaptation of War Of The Worlds is certainly loyal to H.G. Wells.  It may be realistic in the human nature of its science fiction, but in the end, it is also a very bleak film.  There’s much to marvel at, but once the movie is over, as my colleague Miguel and I often recommend to one another, it’ll likely be best that you get outside and bathe in the warm sun under a blue sky, roll around in the grass with your dog, and taste an apple for the first time all over again.  It’s about all we have left to embrace what little is left of our sanity.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III

By Marc S. Sanders

Remember that CW TV show called Felicity?  I’ve never seen an episode, but I remember the advertisements.  Beautiful, former child actor, Keri Russell with the golden, curly locks of love, was on her way to college.  Every commercial had that crisp, home like comfort feel voiceover.  It left me with an impression that this was a corny, yet sweeping exploration of coming of age while at college, and gaining independence.  The show came from JJ Abrams.  Abrams is a good director and writer.  He’s now one of the biggest producers in Hollywood.  Back in the early 2000s however, he wanted to nurture his characters.  Protect them.  Make them feel warm and content.  After Felicity, he went on to develop a spy thriller series called Alias with Jennifer Garner.  She was a college student with a lovable roommate by day and was super spy by night, or whenever the moment called for it.  Abrams went on to blending his coziness with that of stunts and explosions that modernized a series like, say…Mission: Impossible.  Naturally, when Tom Cruise recruited him for the third film of the high-octane franchise, we got the “Felicity Finish” applied.  Ethan Hunt is sweet and kind, and he’s ready for married life.  How precious!

Don’t get me wrong.  Mission: Impossible III is likely what kept the still running blockbuster movie series going.  Following a style over substance lackluster entry before, from action director John Woo, this third entry went in a completely different direction.  Ethan Hunt hugs a soon to be sister-in-law. Ethan Hunt cries.  Ethan Hunt has feelings.  Ethan Hunt has to rescue who he regards as his “kid sister,” Felicity…I mean adorable Keri Russell from being held hostage.  Ethan Hunt belongs on the cover of a Hallmark card with actress Michelle Monaghan.

I imagine JJ Abrams is not fond of the early James Bond movies.  I’d make a case that he watches them and wishes that someone, anyone would just give 007 a warm and sincere hug after he saves the world, and hold him close.  Superspies have emotions too, ya know?

The story of this third M:I chapter focuses on the pursuit of a MacGuffin known as the rabbit’s foot.  A powerful weapons dealer named Owen Davian (a brutally frightening Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is working to get a hold of it.  Following a first act rescue mission that Ethan and his IMF team (Ving Rhames, Maggie Q, Jonathan Rhys Meyers) engage in, the main hero finds reason to capture Davian and intercept the mysterious rabbit’s foot.  Complications get in the way because Ethan has fallen in love with an adorably beautiful doctor named Julia (Monaghan), who is unaware of her fiancé’s exploits.   

The action is superb in Abrams cinematic directorial debut.  Once it gets started after a sweet engagement party scene, it does not let up.  Everything is well edited and choreographed. An essential part of a Mission: Impossible movie.  An unexpected attack on a bridge crossing is spectacular.  The covert tactics are fun to watch as well.  When Ethan and team secretly invade The Vatican, the step-by-step maneuvers are carried out with gleeful ease.

There are twists and double crosses at play as well that you are not even thinking about looking for.  Frankly, they work more effectively here than they did in the original M:I film directed by Brian DePalma.  When the traitor is revealed to deliver a line like “It’s complicated,” it is not unreasonable to gasp.

Hoffman still remains the best of the villains in Cruise’s action franchise.  Maybe that’s by Abrams’ design because this is probably the most personal of all the films to date.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the guy who will be apprehended and braced to a railing on an airplane by the IMF team, and yet will still hold the upper hand.  A question like “Do you have a wife or a girlfriend?” has a much more sinister context when uttered by Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

I do recall when I first saw the film that the ending is not original.  It’s an opportunity for Tom Cruise to do another running scene, but it was first used in an episode of Alias where an operative is remotely giving directions to the hero while talking on a cell phone.  Clever the first time.  The second time seeing it, I was just calling it out.  So, Abrams needs to stretch his imagination a little.  No matter.  The pulse of the adventure races at high speed.

Mission: Impossible III might be unabashedly hokey and corny.  Everyone looks like they belong in a JC Penney commercial at Christmas time, or on a CW TV show like Felicity. However, it won’t deny you of what you are looking for which are big stunts in the sky and on the ground, along with the cool gadgets and those signature pull away masks that made the original series so memorable. 

I still realize that by the time film series reached this chapter, the franchise still belonged exclusively to Tom Cruise occupying every frame.  Once again, his team of IMF agents really don’t matter or carry any substance except to wear clothes.  At least this time, Tom Cruise cries over someone else.  So, he’s not as self-involved as the last couple of times, or even the last couple of dozen movies.  That’s a nice change of pace. 

TOP GUN: MAVERICK

By Marc S. Sanders

Top Gun: Maverick is why we should never, ever give up on movie theaters and only settle for the flat screen TV.  This is a film, a sequel to a very hokey, cheesy 1980s blockbuster, that will top my list of most unexpected surprises.  This picture seemed inconceivable to accept, and yet, barring an unnecessary love story subplot, I relished every second of it.  Finally, a movie delivers more, a lot more, than its trailers ever promised.

One of Tom Cruise’s best films has him return to preppy boy Navy Aviator pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.  He’s a captain now, declining opportunities for promotion over the last near 35 years since we first saw him on screen in 1986.  Like Cruise, Maverick looks like he’s barely aged.  So, with that in mind, I guess we can accept that he can jack up his Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle to unbelievable speeds with no helmet, and can take a super powered jet to Mach 10 speed, crash it and survive with everything on his person still intact.

Maverick is called upon by his old Top Gun classmate and former competitor Iceman (Val Kilmer) to teach a class of the current one percent of elite fighter pilots.  They are about to embark on a mission to take out an enemy weapons depot hidden behind treacherous low altitude mountain terrain with sharp curves and narrow pathways.  The area is also highly secured with machine guns, rockets, advanced radar, and enemy fighter jets.  This film truly convinced me that this mission is actually impossible.  Even Ethan Hunt of the Impossible Mission Force couldn’t survive this. 

The highlight of Top Gun: Maverick is of course the aerial training and combat maneuvers done with actual F-18 jets that Cruise has gone on record insisting that the cast fly in.  The barest minimum of CGI and manufactured effects were used.  As a producer powerhouse in Hollywood, if Tom Cruise demands his action to be as convincing as possible, you are going to get your finished product.  Much of the second act of the film focuses on Maverick outsmarting his students in the skies.  These are the best the country has to offer but they haven’t encountered Maverick yet.  The planes fly at one another and over each other and spiral together like a well synchronized ballet.  I believe the footage that Tony Scott provided in the first Top Gun film still holds up very well.  In this new film, it’s a tremendous enhancement. I know nothing about the laws of physics or computing the trajectories a jet can make at a particular speed, but what this film demonstrates is that what seems inconceivable is downright actual.  You can not help but be impressed.

Still, to satisfy my particular movie requirements cannot hinge on action alone.  I have to care about the characters.  The characters are the stakes at play in dangerous action films like Die Hard or Indiana Jones.  It’s what heightens the suspense.  Fortunately, the script from Peter Craig takes time to invest in an older, more mature Maverick who remains haunted, but wiser following the loss of his best friend and co-pilot Goose.  Now, Goose’s son, code name Rooster (Miles Teller) is one of the stand out students who holds a grudge against Maverick.  It’s not as simple as the guy losing his father at a young age.  There’s more to it to be revealed. 

Teller plays well off of Cruise, as do the other hot shot students made up of Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis, and Glen Powell.  They’re all daredevil pilots like the first film offered, but they are written with more believability this time.  These are not the frat house beach bum guys that were so often shown in 1980s pictures.  Powell, known as Hangman, and Teller’s Rooster fill the Iceman/Maverick opposition here.  Only this time, it gets more personal as the characters go after their back stories and history.  Maverick is caught in the middle.  So, the drama is well played here. 

Director Joseph Kosinski makes the mission easy to comprehend.  Graphic maps show the impossible trajectory these pilots are expected to face.  The audience easily understands the challenges of going at impossibly low altitudes followed by fast upward careens into near atmospheric space while still trying to maintain consciousness and not get shot down. 

At the very least, to enjoy this picture, I think I’m thankful that I’m not a Navy pilot.  If I was, perhaps I’d be apt to dismiss the daring stunts that are committed over the course of the film.  I don’t want to know what can and can’t be done.  Let me have my illusion.  What’s especially appreciated is the perspective you’re given from the cockpit of these jets whether they are flying in a straight line, or alongside another plane or when Cruise himself is there in his trademark Maverick helmet taking his aircraft into an inverted and upside-down position with the top of the snowcapped mountains beneath him.  It’s positively mind-blowing. 

Maybe you have an idea of how the film will end up.  I won’t spoil it, but I certainly stopped thinking about it as the movie played along.  This movie had my undivided attention for just over two hours.  Moments occur where characters are in such convincing peril that any outcome would have worked and kept the integrity of the film.

Naturally, there’s a love story.  Most people didn’t care for the romance of the first film.  Not me.  I really liked how Kelly McGillis and Cruise performed together.  It was sweet and sensitive.  It took its time.  (See my review.)  For this picture, McGillis wasn’t welcomed back.  Google her quite frank and very honest response as to why she’s not here.  Instead, Jennifer Connelly romances Cruise as a bartender named Penny Benjamin (yes, the Admiral’s daughter).  Opposite Cruise, they look like a good couple.  However, when their shared scenes come up, honestly if you need a pee break this is when to rush out of the theatre.  The two characters don’t challenge one another like the first time around.  Penny has to just hide Maverick from her teen daughter.  Meh.  That’s sitcom fare.  This is nothing terrible here.  It’s just not overly necessary.  Does Maverick need to have a love interest?  Is it the end all be all?  This movie would have held up just fine without the love story.  Just be glad there’s another shirtless beach scene for the guys to frolic around this time with a couple of footballs. 

Without question, to date as of this writing, Top Gun: Maverick is the best picture I’ve seen this year.  I already declared the inventiveness of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once as one of the reasons why that film is one of the best of the year.  Cruise’s film tops it though.  The craftsmanship on display is like nothing you’ve seen before.  It challenges the technical marvels of James Cameron’s auspicious achievements and raises the bar for anything to come out after it.

If people like Tom Cruise and other daring producers in Hollywood can manufacture films on this level of story, adventure and suspense, then please, please, please do not close up the Cinematic Multiplexes.  Top Gun: Maverick is meant for the big screen; the biggest screen you can find with the best sound system available.  I’ll be sure to see again it while it remains in theatres.  In fact, release this film every summer until something else tops it.  It is a that good a film. 

TOP GUN

By Marc S. Sanders

For a movie that focuses a lot on showers, men’s locker rooms and bare chested sweaty and chiseled volleyball players, it’s a wonder that it is called Top Gun.  Maybe the title has another indirect meaning to it, other than a moniker for a Navy fighter pilot school of the elite.  Maybe these guys are elite for a different reason.

The Tony Scott film that is supposedly about the top one percent, the best of the best, American fighter pilots in the Navy is arguably the most important film in Tom Cruise’s career.  It launched the actor into a superstar sensation that has hardly faltered since the movie’s release all the way back in 1986.  But is it a good movie?  Well, yes and no.

I’ve always loved Tony Scott’s filmmaking technique.  Sure, his sun-soaked film shots are constantly repeated.  He always relishes in enhancing the beaded glow of sweat drenching his actor’s faces, arms and chests.  It’s seen in nearly every moment of Top Gun, as well as other celebrated pictures like Crimson Tide, Beverly Hills Cop II and True Romance.  Orange sunlight blankets palm trees and beach lined streets.  Bar saloons and military headquarters are lit in sexy blues and greens.  It may lack originality after seeing a few of his films, but it just makes the movie all the more sexy. 

Tony Scott is also a well-versed director in action sequences.  He’ll get your pulse racing and Top Gun is the best example.  The fighter jet sequences in this film are masterful in editing, sound and speed.  It’s fantastic to see how the planes will twirl around and then shoot themselves straight up into a vertical trajectory in the sky and finally cut in on actors Tom Cruise, Anthony Edwards and Val Kilmer for a “WOO!” moment in the cockpit.  This stuff still holds up.

Yet, unlike other modern-day films that focus on cadets or students in our armed forces, Top Gun doesn’t concern itself with the discipline of what it takes to serve in the Navy.  This is the informal, class clown version of An Officer And A Gentleman.  You only need look as far as Tom Cruise’s character’s pilot call name, Maverick.  The name itself is a one-word thematic description of what you are watching.  So, the kid who learned to say “what the fuck” in Risky Business, went on to do daredevil flybys while disobeying orders.

Maverick’s real name is Pete Mitchell.  He has no family except that of his co-pilot, Goose (Anthony Edwards).  The disappearance of his Navy pilot father remains a mystery…because it is sexy and cool to have a mystery for your handsome hero in a film like this.  Call it DRAMATIC HEFT!!!! 

When Maverick and Goose get the opportunity to attend “Top Gun” – a fighter school specializing in training the best pilots in the world in aerial dog fighting – they are intent on getting their names on the plaque for the best of the best of THE BEST.  Competition comes in the other prettiest of the pretty boys with Iceman (Val Kilmer).  These are all great likable characters.  Yet, even when I saw this film at sleepaway camp at age 13, I couldn’t help but notice how distracted it gets with the abundance of erotic machoism on display here.  What would serve as dramatic dialogue in another film is presented in a steam room area allowing opportunity to see the male cast wrapped in towels around their waists with wet spiky blond and black hair.  It truly doesn’t matter what they are talking about in this scene.  When you are watching it, all that you are hearing is the sound of Charlie Brown’s unseen and indecipherable school teacher.  “Waa waa.  Waa waa waa waa!”

That’s not enough though.  The infamous volleyball scene keeps you awake.  I don’t care if you are hetero or homo or bi or pan or plus, the beach volleyball scene keeps you alert as one of Kenny Loggins’ many movie songs plays in accordance.  Tony Scott doesn’t just go for tossing the ball around.  Slow mo captions are offered of each guy just posing with their chiseled arms and chests.  You may not take your eyes off of it, but oh my…what does this have to do with the discipline of attending Navy fighter pilot school training?????

The romance is second to none.  Truly!  These days, people talk about Jack and Rose in Titanic or Ross and Rachel on Friends.  For me, it’s Maverick and Charlie (Kelly McGillis).  Cruise and McGillis really light up their scenes together.  It’s an absolute perfect pairing of sex appeal and it is really when Top Gun performs at its smartest level.  The dialogue is strongest during their scenes.  The romance isn’t rushed but nicely flirted with, and when tragedy strikes within the thin storyline of the overall film, the relationship goes in another supportive and appreciated direction.  When I was a kid, with hormones being discovered for the first time, my buddies and I would elbow each other during the midnight blue sex scene between McGillis and Cruise with the Oscar winning song “Take My Breath Away” from Berlin playing.  I look at this scene now and it is modern romance at a beautiful best.  A fantastic scene from Tony Scott. 

Charlie is the unexpected, well-versed contractor for the Navy giving counsel to the pilot students on how best to operate the jets.  In the 1980s, action blockbusters normally held the women as the barely dressed damsels to be rescued, and nothing more.  The female characters didn’t have brains and the only brawn to go around was saved for Princess Leia or Marion Ravenwood (Raiders).  Charlie is an exception though.  McGillis plays the character as someone who is aware that these testosterone-filled guys will regard her as a piece of meat, until they realize otherwise.  The irony of Top Gun is that the nearly all male cast, Cruise included, are the pieces of meat.  The one main female role is actually the brains of the whole operation.  McGillis was a marvelous actress back in the day.  Go look at Witness and The Accused to see what I mean.  With her help, Cruise elevates above the hokey dialogue of the Top Gun script. Kelly McGillis really could act well in almost anything.  I wish her career went further, honestly. 

Top Gun remains a mainstay in 1980s pop culture.  If the VH1 channel is doing a documentary on the decade of Madonna, Michael Jackson, parachute pants and neon pastels, Top Gun is also brought up in the mix with a close up of Tom Cruise’s toothy grin and his aviator sunglasses.  We were never watching Oscar winning material here, but somehow the film that introduced all of us to Tom Cruise still feels like a day at the beach with the twenty something boy toy in his tight jeans and leather bomber jacket riding his Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle at top speed or breaking the sound barrier in his fighter jet with his shiny navy-blue helmet on his head.  Top Gun and Tom Cruise demonstrated that it’s a party to serve in the Navy.  Why not?  Vietnam was behind us and the decade was not embroiled in war.  Join the Navy!!!!  It’s fun and you get to shower with the best-looking guys in the world.  You’ll even get to play volleyball with them and date your sexy flight instructor.

A lot of the dialogue and the storyline may sound like an adult, military interpretation of Saved By The Bell, but you can’t break away from the sexy allure of what Tony Scott with Cruise, Kilmer, McGillis and Edwards put on the screen.  It’s always been there and somehow a sequel was never made. 

Wait a second!  WHAT??????

THE FIRM

By Marc S. Sanders

Sydney Pollack was the first director to take a crack at adapting one of John Grisham’s best-selling books, namely the still most popular novel, The Firm. Wisely, and with a measure of risk, Pollack took the script from David Rabe, Robert Towne and David Rayfiel and maintained a true adaptation for the first hour of the film while inventing a new kind of second half that I think improves upon Grisham’s story.

Mitchell McDeere (a well cast Tom Cruise) is the most sought after Harvard law graduate in the country. A small Tennessee firm makes an offer to him that outbids any of the big leaguers. Considering that Mitch comes from a poor broken home with a brother (David Strathairn) currently in jail for manslaughter, the offer and treatment given to Mitch and his school teacher wife Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn) could not be more enticing. A house, a car, school loan payoffs, and a near six figure salary in the first year is not something anyone would walk away from.

Once the happy, young couple are comfortable though, a curious FBI man (Ed Harris, an MVP of this stellar cast) inquires if Mitch finds it odd that this firm has four of its lawyers dead within the last ten years. The two most recent casualties perished in a boat accident.

The sharp minded Avery Tolar (another welcome performance from Gene Hackman) is assigned to make sure Mitch follows the path the firm expects of him. Avery also has his sights set on Abby. For a guy who has never been regarded as good looking, Hackman plays a pretty effective flirt.

The firm, led by a seasoned Hal Holbrook with a charming Mark Twain like bow tie, and a perfect henchman villain played by Wilford Brimley (definitely on my top list of best bad guys) are involved with the Mafia and their shady dealings of money laundering, racketeering, murder and embezzlement. Now Mitch is stuck.

The FBI want to use him to uncover the firm’s activities but that risks blowing his career and maybe his and Abby’s life. If he doesn’t cooperate, then the Feds will run him in with the rest of the gang.

A second hour focuses on a complicated way for Mitch to get out of this ordeal. It means a lot of white collar work and contrived timing in the script. Fortunately though, Pollack builds suspense with foot chases and some allies on Mitch’s side, including Holly Hunter as an hourglass figured, bombshell secretary to a private investigator (Gary Busey) that Mitch went to see. His plan involves traveling to and from the Cayman Islands, and making copies of legal documents to build evidence of mail fraud against the firm.

Mail fraud???? That’s right mail fraud. It’s not a sexy crime, but the script with Pollack’s direction and a hard pounding piano soundtrack from Dave Grusin manage to keep the suspense up and alert.

Pollack directs Cruise to sprint across downtown Nashville for some great sights and hideouts in broad daylight. Your adrenaline moves with the film even if you can’t connect all the dots of Mitch’s complex plan.

In fact, it’s best to just give up on following every little step Mitch and his team take to stay ahead of the firm. What works best is the seemingly no win scenario for Mitch and Abby. Pollack follows a Hitchcock trajectory. He leaves the bomb on the table but doesn’t detonate it right away. Thus the suspense holds steady.

So, the best kind of counsel I can give is to just enjoy The Firm as it runs through its paces. It’s a solid white-collar thriller.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE

By Marc S. Sanders

Brian DePalma directed the first installment of Tom Cruise’s film adaptation of the Mission: Impossible series. It’s good, but not necessarily the best of the bunch.

DePalma’s approach with a script by screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown) & David Koepp opens with last ditch effort at a Cold War setting. (By 1996, Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond had already abandoned that point in history.)

Cobblestone streets in Prague glisten under wet street lamps as a team of spies, led by Jim Phelps (the “Captain Kirk” of the original series) with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt as point man. They are attempting to prevent a buy/sell exchange of a disc containing identities of undercover agents spread across the globe. There are shadows. People walking covertly and other people watching people through cameras on eyeglasses and computer monitors. Everything is going according to plan, until as we expect, nothing goes according to plan, and Tom Cruise seems to be the only one surprised by it all. Now he’s accused of being a traitor having gotten his whole team murdered and he must go rogue (he does this a few times in the M:I films). DePalma’s opening is straight out of a John LeCarre novel. All good stuff.

More good stuff appears in act 2 when Ethan Hunt has to infiltrate CIA headquarters to retrieve another disc and allow himself to cable down into the most high tech secure room in the…well lets just say the world, that is conveniently run by the most incompetent dweeb in the…well let’s just say the world…again. The primarily silent sneak is as beautifully choreographed as a Russian ballet. It’s spectacular.

Even more good stuff occurs in act 3 in a high speed super train crossing through the Chunnel in Europe. There’s a helicopter and Tom Cruise on the roof of the train and even some exploding chewing gum. Act 3 is where DePalma, Towne & Koepp opt to leave the Cold War behind because let’s face it, no spy can remain covert when a helicopter gets tethered to a high speed train in a tunnel.

So yeah, there’s lots of goodies in Mission: Impossible, but it falls terribly short because Tom Cruise produced the film with his ego in the way. For example, he sets up a team of four, all with different specialties. They get properly introduced and then they are given not much to do except watch Tom Cruise “Ethan Hunt” his way out of one dangerous situation after another. Ving Rhames seems like an especially interesting character but all he’s reserved to is typing on a keyboard. Vanessa Redgrave puts on a charming mystery about herself for one short scene as an arms dealer only to do nothing else but sit on the train later on.

Lots of talent was assembled for this film including Jon Voight, Emilio Estevez, Jean Reno and Kristen Scott Thomas but they’re only here to be a live studio audience for Cruise’s heroics.

Compare this film to Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop. Murphy is no doubt the centerpiece, but he does not own every scene. Big moments come from the supporting cast as well. There’s more variety to that picture, which Murphy produced, than Cruise’s production.

A well utilized cast can be the difference between a good picture and a great picture.

MAGNOLIA

By Marc S. Sanders

Ernie Anderson was the cool voiceover for the ABC television network that would introduce upcoming programs for years. He was a staple of the television industry from the 1970s through the ‘90s. I promise that you or your parents know his sharp, recognizable tempo. So, it makes sense that his son Paul Thomas Anderson would center his multiple story crossover film Magnolia around the television industry, within a 10-block radius in the Hollywood Area. Magnolia presents the off-chance coincidences that somehow happen and the unusual phenomena that can occur when never expected.

Anderson’s three hour epic offers storylines centered around former and present day game show quiz kids (Jeremy Blackmon, William H Macy), the game show host stricken with cancer (Phillip Baker Hall), the drug addicted daughter he’s estranged from (Melora Walters), the dying game show producer (Jason Robards), the producer’s son who is a motivational speaker for men to sexually conquer women (Tom Cruise), and the producer’s gold digging wife (Julianne Moore).

Because the narrative of the film has a biblical theme specifically referencing Exodus 8:2, there are also two good natured guardian angels involved. John C Reilly as a sweet but clumsy police officer proud of his work, and a sentimental hospice nurse played beautifully with bedside sympathy by Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Anderson’s film opens with three stories of random coincidence that resulted in the deaths of three different men. More than likely most people would say these tall tales of legend could only occur in a movie. Yet, the voiceover narrator , Ricky Jay, says they did not, and thus begins one specific day with torrential downpours of rain, where all of these random characters will come in contact with a personal experience of monumental impact that will change their individual lives forever. Oddly enough, all these people are somehow connected to one another and are within blocks of each other located near Magnolia Blvd in the Hollywood Hills.

Like Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson directs a film of very weighty emotions that thematically focuses on the sins of fathers that carried over to the futures of their children. The game show is titled “What Do Kids Know?” which likely symbolizes what they didn’t know while at the behest of their parents during their youth. What they know now about their fathers is a burden to bear in insecurities, drug abuse and outright cruelty for the opposite sex. Every character represents some aspect of this ongoing theme during Magnolia. It’s a lot, a whole of information, but fortunately it moves at a very swift pace with an energetic steady cam and dramatic notes of instrumental soundtracks.

Anderson consistently shows different references to Exodus 8:2 by either using the numbers in clocks or decks of cards or temperature readings of the weather or on marquee signs. It’s almost like a scavenger hunt when seeing the film on a multiple viewings.

MAYBE A SPOILER ALERT:

“But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs.”

Sure. Most recognize the Bible verse as Moses’ decree to Pharaoh to release the Jews from Egypt. I like to think Anderson used Magnolia to release his beloved, but damaged, characters from their own sins or the sins of their fathers. Set them free even if it could be by means of confession, judgment, offering and begging for forgiveness, or journeying towards a personal salvation.

The smart device that Anderson uses is the angelic music of Aimee Mann. Often I talk about how I love when film characters would spontaneously dance. In Magnolia, the cast surprisingly breaks into song with Mann’s confessional number entitled “Wise Up.” It more or less summarizes each individual plight that all the various characters must endure. Magnolia is only an even better film because of Mann’s music.

Magnolia is a beautiful film that I draw many personal parallels from, especially having now lost both of my parents and being by my father’s bedside during his difficult final days of illness.

It is very touching, sometimes funny, and sometimes a difficult film to watch with a belief in random coincidence that is only stronger after watching it.

Like the film insists “we may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.” After Magnolia finishes, you won’t be through with Paul Thomas Anderson’s film. It’s a film that will stay with you.

LIONS FOR LAMBS

By Marc S. Sanders

Robert Redford directed a huge, glossy looking misfire of a political thriller in 2007 with a film called Lions For Lambs, written by Matthew Michael Carnagan.

Preachiness is never fun when it labors on for an hour and a half. I don’t care if it’s Tom Cruise or Meryl Streep or even Robert Redford doing the preaching. If these powerhouse celebrities called me up and asked if they could come to my house for coffee and talk, and when they got there, all they did was spew in circles a political platform of “right and wrong” and “why” and “don’t” and “can’t” and “yes and no,” I’d call the police and have them arrested. Time for you to leave, Meryl! Tom, it’s been real.

In 2007, during the late half of Bush 43’s second term, questions of war with the Middle East was at the forefront during a post 9/11 age. Redford, with Cruise producing, thought it’d be interesting to show three different stories (actually two long winded conversations set around desks, and two stranded soldiers) occurring. A political professor (Redford) tries to open the eyes of a student (Andrew Garfield) with great potential but no drive to make a difference. A Republican Senator (Cruise) sets up his own interview with a liberal leaning reporter (Streep) to boast of a new secret mission he’s championing, and two special forces ops are left stranded (Michael Pena & Derek Luke) in the cold of Iraq, the most interesting of three narratives.

Carnagan’s script goes in circles and it’s likely the politics he questions all lean left. Yet the conversations (Redford & Garfield; Cruise & Streep) become just a lot of back talk. A character makes a point, and the other character makes a counter point. I was hoping for a line like “Meryl, you ignorant slut!” Where are we going with all of this?

The soldiers are the mission planned by the Senator that has now gone awry and follows their outcome as they are left wounded and surrounded by Iraqi forces in the snowy darkness. We learn they were students of the professor who wanted to make a difference by enlisting in the Army. See the connection now; the very thin uninspired connection?

Here’s something for ya. In case, you can’t recognize easily enough, Redford dresses his characters in either shades of Red or Blue. Nice touch with Garfield’s frat boy wearing a RED Hawaiian shirt while Redford has the BLUE denim button down. Cruise gets the shiny RED coffee mug for a prop. Does the film have to be THIS transparent? If so, couldn’t the dialogue have been as well?

Lions For Lambs talks A LOT and tells me nothing. Streep’s reporter is a disappointment. Yet Redford portrays her as noble. She loathes the platform of the Senator she just interviewed and is adamant about not writing the quite revealing story he just laid out for her. How can she be that way? She’s a reporter!!!! Tell the truth. Inform the public, even if it’s not pretty, and yet Redford will have a viewer believe it is righteous of Streep to figuratively break her pencil and unplug her computer while she gripes to her editor in chief. No! This is an absolute betrayal of journalistic integrity. What is Robert Redford, the once producer and star of All The President’s Men, thinking here???

You wanna talk about betrayal? The final moments with Streep really had me puzzled. She takes a thought-provoking cab ride that drives past the Capital, Arlington National Cemetery, the Supreme Court, and The White House (right, dab, in front of it no less). Reader, I’ve been to Washington DC a number of times as recent as this past summer. Where the hell is this cabbie driving to, and what route was he taking????

A FEW GOOD MEN

By Marc S. Sanders

A Few Good Men really does hold up.

Anyone with even minimal movie going experience can predict how it is going to end almost as soon as it starts, but that doesn’t take away from Aaron Sorkin’s first screenplay based on his original stage play.

It is well cast. For the film, no one else could ever play the intimidating and terrifying Colonel Nathan R Jessup other than Jack Nicholson. It’s not that it is just him in the role. It’s really Nicholson’s whole career legacy against the arguably still ripening careers of Demi Moore, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Kevin Pollack and Tom Cruise. Nicholson’s timed grandstanding is necessary for the role to work.

Cruise on the other hand left me feeling a little too overplayed. The role calls for cockiness, yes, but is Cruise too cocky? Some of the gags he does work. Some don’t, like impersonating Nicholson momentarily (leave that for the guys on SNL, Tom), or when he’s poking fun at Moore’s character to his own delight. It’s a little too much. Still, his courtroom scenes are like watching the best in live theatre. Those scenes play like great sport, notably thanks to Tom Cruise.

Major props go to JT Walsh as a conflicted witness. When I say conflicted, I mean he authenticates a seriously valid and personal dilemma beautifully. Had it not been for Jack Nicholson, Walsh might have had an Oscar nomination. A shame he didn’t come close to such recognition while he was alive. He was such a great character actor.

Recognition also goes out to Kevin Bacon as a well versed prosecutor/Marine. His timing exudes the experience his character has, despite his youthful appearance.

Demi Moore might be caught trying too hard, I think. Kevin Pollack is the wise mentor sitting quietly waiting for his great moments. Kiefer Sutherland is great in almost anything he does. He doesn’t ever steal the spotlight like Cruise, Nicholson or Moore but he makes a great presence; conniving and bold.

The direction is nothing special really. Rob Reiner does fine but honestly Sorkin’s script sells itself.

Yeah, yeah. “You can’t handle the truth.” Great line, but I got news for you. I’d argue there’s even better lines in this 1992 film. It’s worth revisiting.