Mission: Impossible - Fallout Review

The way to determine a great action film is the quality of its bathroom fight scene. "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" has a pretty good one, which makes it a pretty good action movie. Sure, there are countless other action scenes in this latest in the long running franchise, but few on this intimate of scale (most involve breakneck car chases, or freaking helicopters crashing into snowy mountain tops). It's the perfect summarization of the aging hero's latest entry, "pretty good" (feel free to toss a "darn" in the middle there).

Viewed against July's other big movie "Skyscraper," which I gave two and a half stars to, "Mission Impossible 6" is significantly better entertainment; you get far more bang (and I mean "bang") for your buck here than the half star difference between the two implies.

"Mission: Impossible - Fallout" is a perfect "Tom Cruise movie," at least when he's focused on punching bad guys from one location to another. From a plot stand of view, a perfunctory one, involving Cruise having to chase down stolen plutonium from madman Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), who wants to blow stuff up. Sure, there's little details here and there, with old friends lending a helping hand, a forgotten love suddenly appearing just in time to be in danger (and even a traitor or two(?)), but don't go into the megaplex expecting Shakespeare. Or anything new. Or anything you haven't seen Tom Cruise do. The dialogue is all stuff that sounds good in trailers (which explains why the trailers have so few exchanges of words), but it sets up the action just fine.

Tom's character, Ethan Hunt, is seemingly indestructible despite almost wearingly scraping himself off the floor each time he's put back down. Whenever he sees an impossible jump he never hesitates, and we the audience know he's going to make that leap, but the film almost doesn't let him. Instead of clearing the jump flawlessly, he bounces off the wall yet just barely hangs on- it's a refreshing change from most action movies, it's almost like it's his first action movie, even though most people in the crowded theater probably came here because of fond memories of the first five flicks.

It all adds up to your usual action movie cocktail, only executed quite well, playing out like an old James Bond film trimmed of its plot (as well as careless sex and chain smoking). The supporting cast really help sell things here, an eclectic, almost baffingly mixture of character actors all playing characters in a movie by doing and saying things we've all seen and done in other movies, and never in real life. But they're all so good at playing that person that it works on a level beyond dialogue; ignoring what someone was saying and just listening to how they were talking, their tone, facial expressions, you'd get the picture.

Let's try. Imagine Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) walks in a damp basement to talk to Ethan. By observing the scene and not the discourse, I thought:

"Oh, he's got bad new- OK cool, new set pieces, what's gonna blow up now?"

Well, he brought bad news and things did explode, but not before a shootout! Now that's what I call an effective genre film!

Skyscraper Review

Last week's big action flick might as well been called "Rock Hard," as this is effectively a remake of the far superior 1988 film "Die Hard" with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (Though I think "Duct Tape: The Action Movie" is just as good, as Dwayne uses the sticky stuff to get out of more than one sticky situation.)

Mr. Johnson plays Will Sawyer, who's in the security business for skyscrapers (which much be a new field, as I've never heard of such an occupation), working out of his garage with his wife and two kids. An old friend Ben (Pablo Schreiber) offers him the chance of a lifetime, to inspect the world's tallest building, located in Hong Kong.

What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, if you have ever seen an action film, particularly any that isolates the hero outnumbered in a foreign, you know the drill; there's a double crossing, incompetent cops, and a seemingly unlimited number of bad guys with bad shots but tons of ammo. What matters here is the action itself, which is pretty good, even if it is just Dwayne Johnson doing his best John McClane (though without the chain-smoking or one-liners).

His only defining characteristic was his missing leg, which, though a marvel technical achievement in removing appendages for stars, did little to actually define his character. Sure, it raises the stakes a bit (not unlike Bruce Willis' bloodied feet in "Die Hard"), but am I really supposed to believe that, biceps and all, that The Rock is no match for dozens of nameless henchmen with guns? I think not.

There is an overarching theme of family, and how its power can overwhelm any odds, but that softness hurts the overall film's effectiveness; for every movie "Skyscraper" shamelessly riffs on, it lacks edge, the brutal, bloody shootouts and fight-outs that will get more teenagers in the cinema but less old-timers like me.

The setting of Hong Kong is nothing but background story to the building- there is no exotic atmosphere in any scene, especially inside the skyscraper, where it looks like a vertical "Mall of America" in its prime. Upon some internet searching, it doesn't surprise me that Chinese-owned Legendary Pictures financed this film.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again Review

I've been going to the movies since I was a wee lad, and "Mamma Mia 2" is only the second film to receive a standing ovation once the credits roll (the first was inexplicably Robin William's 2006 comedy "RV"). It's worth noting that, despite that three star score up top there, I was still sitting in my seat and my hands were not slapping each other.

That's not to say that this sequel to the 2008 original is bad, it's just not for me. Sure, I sing "Dancing Queen" when it comes on the radio, and much of the cast is superbly talented, I just wasn't feeling this movie. The jokes, though few and very far between, were fine, inoffensive chuck-inspired quips of dialogue, the performances were charming and choreography was well-staged, but what point is there here? It's about Amanda Seyfried's character "Sophia" opening a hotel in honor of her dead mom Donna (Meryl Streep)- that's it! That's the entire plot!!

The exposition leads to the your usual romantic-comedy antics that follow. A long-long love shows up. A family member appears after years of distance, with more than just a few scenes of flashbacks, though enough here to qualify this as both a sequel and a prequel.

These prequel scenes held the least amount of power, especially since I have never seen the first film, as they exist to bulk out the overall thin story with additional subplots; I also have a sneaky suspicion that these scenes, which lack the original ensemble cast, were to avoid paying the elder cast (I imagine Streep's and Cher's hourly rate is quite high). The cast during these "years ago" parts were also less than convincing- am I really supposed to believe that Jeremy Irvine is a young Pierce Brosnan?

But picture this, me in a movie theater roughly five hours ago. In a packed cineplex, a young girl the row in front of me edges to the front of her seat by the time the first song plays, and did so for every song. This movie is not for me! I feel I cannot offer this film any actual criticism because it was not made for me, and because the people it was made for so obviously enjoyed it.

In its opening weekend "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" has already grossed more than its $75 million dollar budget, and I imagine its soundtrack will go on to make a lot of dough as well, even if it is, in essence, just another ABBA compilation. If a film makes that much money so quickly, then the people this picture was produced for cannot be wrong. Three stars.