Misson: Impossible III (2006)

After the qualitative dud that was John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II, it’s a wonder that Paramount was even willing to entertain the notion of a third installment. Then again, the sequel put up good numbers at the box office and Tom Cruise was still a force to be reckoned with on the big screen. With director J.J. Abrams bringing his knack for savvy intrigue to the table, the end result is a whirlwind of a film that grips you more than either of its predecessors.

No longer an active field agent, IMF member Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) spends his time training new agents while hiding his job and past from his fiancé. When one of his former pupils is captured, IMF calls on hunt to rescue her. When the mission fails, Hunt is dragged deeper down the rabbit hole and goes full-on active duty again. Hunt and his new team must find a way to prevent a ruthless arms dealer named Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) from acquiring a mysterious super weapon, sniff out a mole inside IMF, and keep Hunt’s wife out of danger.

Fans of the TV show Mission: Impossible have long complained about the film series and I am sure that any of those fans who saw M:I 3 did plenty of bellyaching. Perhaps Abrams drew from his work on Alias to form the foundation of the spy antics of this film. Gone is most of the long-winded exposition of how the plan is supposed to go down. In its place is a frantic pace and high-octane set pieces that grip you tight. Some fans of the series will find this approach refreshing while others may feel Abrams sold M:I out and emulates the secret agent mechanics of James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Jack Bauer. While the format does make this film harder to remember, I still found myself refreshed.

Abrams has been unafraid to take an unorthodox approach to his work on television and he is similarly unafraid to be unorthodox here. During what would normally be the key set piece of the film, in which Ethan Hunt breaks into a highly secure Chinese research center at the top of a dizzying skyscraper, the audience sees nothing. Rather than watch the frenzied smash-and-grab sequence, we wait outside with Hunt’s partners wondering what on earth is going on in there. Even the item he is grabbing, the Rabbit’s Foot, is never explained; it is simply something both our protagonist and antagonist want to get their hands on. It’s a total MacGuffin but the spy/thriller genre has always utilized that sort of plot device.

Because Hunt’s team members have been interchangeable over three films, the success or failure of M:I 2 and M:I 3 really lies with the villain. The first film introduced us to the determined and heroic Ethan Hunt, so emphasis on villain was minimal (and we didn’t know who the real villain was for much of the film). The villain in M:I 2 was a clichéd rouge agent. Mission: Impossible III features the most intense villain yet and Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves every word of praise he received for his performance. His character is so intelligent, resourceful, and vicious enough to make audiences feel that no one is safe. The level of ferocity that Hoffman injects into the film raises the stakes and helps make the break-neck pace feel warranted.

The plot itself may be forgettable but I walked away from this film marveling at how exciting it was. It boasts an excellent villain, slick directing, and a flurry of intense action sequences. In short, this is the kind of stuff we should expect from a spy flick. It’s not as convoluted as the original and not bogged down with the silly and intricate choreographed violence of M:I 2. It’s a fine cat-and-mouse game and stands, in my mind, as the best of the three M:I films thus far. It is also easily the most underrated film in the series. If M:I 2 turned you off to the series, do yourself a favor and check this one out. Chances are you won’t be disappointed.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

2012 (2009)

Michael Bay may be the master of blowing things up in Hollywood, but when your script calls for apocalyptic destruction on a global scale, look no further than Roland Emmerich. Love him or hate him, Emmerich has created special-effects heavy disaster popcorn flicks for a generation. If you are looking for big, dumb action, then this film is nearly perfect. If you are looking for an engaging disaster flick with believable human drama, well, let me remind you that this is a Roland Emmerich film.

In 2009, geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers that neutrinos from major solar flare activity are baking the Earth’s core. He estimates that within three years, this will cause the Earth’s crust to destabilize and the poles to shift, causing global destruction. Three years later, science-fiction writer and limo driver Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) scrambles to save his children, his ex-wife (Amanda Peet), and her boyfriend (Thomas McCarthy) from the end of the world. Along the way, secrets are uncovered, revealing who knew what, when they knew it, and how world leaders planned to survive the cataclysm.

There are some obvious missteps throughout this film. Right off the bat, you don’t hire John Cusack to be your everyman-turned-apocalypse-hero if you want your film to be believable. Second, if you’re going to tear the world apart, make sure you do so in a consistent and believable way. Is half of what we’re seeing even physically or geologically possible? Finally, divvy up the action between a few different groups of people. By the end of this film everyone in the audience will balk at all the coincidence and lucky timing that brought Jackson and his family through so many intense and crazy sequences unscathed. It is simply a pill that cannot be swallowed.

If nothing else, 2012 is frustrating to watch because I quickly saw enormous amounts of potential in the story. This is a broad, sweeping epic that would make for a great miniseries or even a full-on TV show if it were to be done correctly. Instead, every single plot line and story arc is rushed and condensed to fit an all-too-confining 158-minute runtime. While it seems strange to say that two and a half hours is not enough time to tell a story, it is definitely the case with 2012.

Many of the characters have solid foundations even if they are saddled with disaster clichés and stereotypes. You’ve got the family man trying to survive, a scientist trying to help humanity any way he can, and several colorful supporting characters that grow on you over the course of the film. This makes it all the more irritating when some of these folks die toward the end. If you’re going to spend two hours warming us up to annoying but appreciable characters, don’t kill them off to serve the obvious conclusion. In the 21st century, it should be okay to mix things up a little with who lives and who dies, especially when these characters have promise in a post-disaster world.

2012 is a film that tries to do too much. At its core, it strives to be a straightforward disaster drama. This goal is undermined by too many of the illogical character decisions and occurrences that plague the sub-genre. It even gives up on being a straight drama at times by throwing in silly gags and deaths intended to draw chuckles from the typical summer audience crowd. I would easily trade much of the CGI disaster stuff in this film for a tense conspiracy thriller about the chilling behind-the-scenes lottery that selects which of the world’s richest and most powerful have the clout and money to survive impending doom while the rest of the world is kept in the dark.

There is enough bad CGI, acting, and writing in this film to make you wonder why my rating is as high as it is. But I assure you that outlining all the best parts of this film leaves you with the framework for something potentially great. It's too bad 2012 turns out to be another case of a great concept ruined by terrible execution.

RATING: 2.25 out of 5

Tron (1982)

The geek in me went nuts for this film. As someone who grew up without photorealistic video games at the mall arcade or my uncle’s Nintendo, Tron looks very much like my childhood gaming experience come to life. The story may be far-fetched and character motivations suspect, but the computer world seen here is perfectly realized.

Software engineer and video game designer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is out to prove that a rival programmer (David Warner) stole his designs. To prove it, Flynn breaks into his former place of employment to hack the mainframe and find the evidence. The mainframe, called Master Control Panel (MCP for short) fights back by blasting Flynn with an experimental laser. This digitizes Flynn and brings him inside the computer world. As Flynn seeks a way out of his digital prison, he joins a band of computer programs that resist the MCP’s tyrannical thirst for power and control over the entire world’s computer systems.

When it comes to movies, I am all about understanding context. Sometimes I fail in that quest but I always try to understand a film and its impact as of its release date. Needless to say, many of the visual effects in Tron blew me away. Most are obviously dated now, but only a few of them look really bad by today’s standards. A few still look impressive yet today. Younger audiences will probably have a harder time appreciating this film because you have to understand what 80s and early 90s games looked like. Everyone else in the know will appreciate just how the filmmakers conceptualized a 1980s inside-the-computer world.

Are there problems? Sure. Flynn is really only interested in proving that he was ripped off. The only reason he joins the resistance movement is because he has to in order to find a way back to his world. Sure, he comes to appreciate the conflict against the MCP but that’s really only because it has it out for him. There is never an emotional attachment between Flynn and the program characters he meets along the way. There is a similar emotional disconnect between the computer world characters and the audience. The program characters never act human enough for us to be truly concerned about them.

Throughout the film, I found many elements that appear in later films. I was particularly struck by how similar this film was in many ways to The Matrix. Flynn is very much Neo, able to manipulate the computer world because he is special (in Flynn’s case, he is a ‘user’ or non-program). For a film that has largely been relegated to the cult-classic bin, Tron’s influence on later sci-fi is undeniable.

Tron continues to be an innovative and dazzling film. The pace lags at times but those slow points allow sci-fi geeks like me to examine the technical aspects of the film more deeply. It may not appeal to general audiences en mass, but it is a smart, daring film that is perfect for those who don’t mind veering off the beaten track of Hollywood blockbusters, Oscar bait, and formulaic genre flicks. As tempted as I am to nudge this film’s rating higher, I have to shrug off my personal bias and give it a fair score because there are a few bugs in Tron’s system.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5