Mission: Impossible III

Obviously the fourth Mission: Impossible movie just came out, but I still haven't seen the third yet, so I decided to correct that last week. Each movie in the series has had a different director and subsequently a different tone, and the third installment was the first feature film made by J.J. Abrams. It sort of mixes and matches elements from the first two movies. The first was a paranoid spy thriller, and the second was pretty much a Hong Kong action movie. The third film has some of the same kind of bombastic action and huge scale of the second, but it's ultimately closer to the first film in terms of realism (which itself wasn't exactly totally authentic, just look at the climactic scene for proof). Some elements definitely seemed silly - there were several one-liners and over-the-top moments that probably didn't need there, and got in the way of the story a bit. But the setup was smarter and the payoff better than the mediocre second film, and the darker tone seemed to fit the series well. I don't think it was quite as good as the original, but it was close enough.

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt, though he is no longer a regular spy and instead trains recruits for the agency. He's even trying to settle down with a woman played by Michelle Monaghan, something his friends and colleagues are skeptical of. He gets pulled back into action when one of his trainees played by Keri Russell is kidnapped on a mission, a job that kicks off a plot involving someone bad inside the agency trying to stop him while a black market dealer played by Philip Seymour Hoffman tries to sell something that's potentially extremely dangerous. Backs get stabbed, explosions go off, and complicated heists get executed. The movie is completely packed with recognizable actors, and most of them do pretty well in their roles. It's fun to see Ving Rhames and Tom Cruise together again, and their team is rounded out competently by Johnathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q. Laurence Fishburne plays a fairly predictable but solidly slimy higher-up at the agency, and Simon Pegg only gets a couple scenes to do his wisecracking nerd routine but does it well anyway. Hoffman plays a totally creepy and intimidating villain despite his lack of physical prowess, and the mole subplot ended up being more interesting than I expected. Abrams makes a few unexpected decisions and shoots the action very well, and I thought the distinct color palette of the film worked as well. It's not a particularly special action movie in most ways, but it's done well enough to be pretty enjoyable throughout. It got me interested in hopefully seeing Brad Bird's take on the series before it leaves the theaters.

Public Enemies

Pacing and technology issues prevent Public Enemies from being a really great film, but as a depression-era version of Heat it's quite enjoyable and will probably hold up pretty well. I haven't seen a ton of Michael Mann's movies, but I'm always impressed by the quality of the acting and plotting in addition to the unique realism of the gun fights that still manage to be really exciting. This movie has a huge cast and pretty big scope, as it covers not just John Dillinger's life but everything that was going on around him, from the law enforcement ramifications of all the bank robberies to the rise of organized crime. Johnny Depp is good as always, showing he's not just limited to wacky roles these days, and besides the somewhat lame accent Christian Bale plays an interesting and nuanced antagonist. Oscar winner Marion Cotillard brought more to her part than I expected of it, and really helped to humanize Dillinger as more than just a jovial dangerous criminal.

The one thing that kept me from totally liking the movie the most was the slow pace. At about two hours and twenty minutes it wasn't terribly overlong, and very few scenes ever dipped below the pretty high standard of quality Mann set, but I couldn't help feeling it was stretched a little too thin here and there, and the final act just went on for entirely too long before the inevitable conclusion finally occurred. The other issue was the use of digital camera for the vast majority of the shooting. When the camera's standing still, the picture it takes is pretty damn stunning. But if the camera is moving rapidly, which is pretty necessarily the case in a movie full of violent bank robberies, it can get distractingly blurry and inhibit the film. Because of the way it was shot and edited together so well, it doesn't hurt comprehension like it might in the hands of a lesser production team, but it does show that the cameras we have aren't quite up to the task of this sort of movie just yet. All issues considered, I had little problem with what was ever actually happening on screen at any given moment, and mostly liked the film quite a bit.

Watchmen

Much like 300, Watchmen is Zack Snyder's faithful take on one of a comic book icon's original stories; in this case, the most celebrated and influential graphic novel of the last 25 years. Obvious comparisons aside though, despite sharing some similar flaws, it's a more involved and interesting story, and he does a pretty solid job telling it. The movie is far from a perfect adaptation, although it's pretty legitimate to say that a lot of the reasons for that stem from the very nature of the comic itself. It's simply not structured like a film. It was originally released as a series of twelve issues, and several of them focus on a single character's background instead of really advancing the central plot forward. A truer translation would have been a miniseries instead of a theatrical release. But there's probably no way you get them to do that with a large enough budget to really pull off the story, and a compromise like this is the best we can really hope for. The script probably could have used a bit of tweaking to account for the different way a movie would flow, but except for a few segments to explain character that almost completely halt momentum, it worked out.

There are a few things that can be blamed on less than amazing filmmaking, though. It's clear from his comic work and Dawn of the Dead that Snyder does not have an ounce of subtlety in his being. The comic certainly didn't shy away from violence, being fairly grisly in places, but there's a difference between a panel showing something and a film lingering on it for several seconds. The fights are far crazier, and while I thought the choreography was actually pretty good and don't mind the speed ramping effect nearly as much as a lot of people, it was a big feeling of cognitive dissonance to see the heroes kicking people across rooms when the whole point of the story seemed to be about the fact that (except for Dr. Manhattan) these were just normal people who fought crime in costume for a living. I didn't mind a slight increase in vulgarity, but one of the sex scenes was really over the top too, not aided by the absurd choice in music. It wasn't the only occurrence of this either, with a lot of the choices either being too obvious or just seeming out of place with what was happening. I would have preferred an original score most of the time.

Not that the movie was all bad. I thought the entire relationship between the second Nite Owl and Silk Spectre was pretty laughable, and Veidt was pretty horribly miscast, but other than that the main cast did solid work despite there not being a big name among them, and in places excellent. Jackie Earle Haley's performance as Rorschach was 100% spot on, and just like in the comic, he easily stood out as the best character. It was very interesting to see the audience react more and more favorably to him as his actions become more and more psychotic. The Comedian also worked very well, and Carla Gugino was nice to see again even though most of the time she was covered in crappy "old person" makeup. There were a few other issues with makeup actually, especially the film's version of Richard Nixon, which was too comically out of place to take any of his scenes seriously. The changed ending actually seemed to work better within the existing plot and definitely would go over with a normal audience better, so I didn't mind that change terribly. All the little changes, missteps, and successes added up to a very long and divisive film, one that in general I liked but wasn't completely satisfied with. Still, an interesting experiment.