Mission: Impossible

https://i.imgur.com/WaL40ox.gif

Lol

big fan of this one. getting this out of the way, i thought the Ethan/Ilsa romance which was only hinted at maybe didn't work, only because when she died it didn't feel heavy enough for someone that close to him, and while i don't want that type of heaviness for this story since it becomes an albatross on the narrative in these types of films (see: latter Craig Bonds), it felt a bit muted as far as a moment. She was a fantastic character who arguably revived the series as much as McQuarrie, maybe she deserved a bit better. but maybe they were just coming to a dead end with the part and maybe Ferguson was done playing that role and had other things she wanted to commit her time to. i suspect that might be the case. which is cool, she's a fantastic actor.

Cruise did his usual Cruise stuff and as the solid center of the franchise he's both likable and clearly insane to do what he does IRL. i appreciate his commitment to the craft. There's not much more to say about him.

Hayley Atwell is great, i also give a shoutout to her wardrobe and generally the duplicitous nature of the character really serves the narrative well, it's less about protecting her but protecting her while keeping an eye on her because she's liable to both escape and steal everything from you while doing so. which works to keep the chase going through various countries and setpieces the entire time. the car chase was particularly excellent, maybe not quite as impactful as the Ilsa pursuit in Rogue Nation but more gleefully demented.

Speaking of demented, i'm guessing Pom Klementieff really appreciated being given a shot to play a character completely the opposite of Mantis. she was clearly having a great time there, my kid's favorite part was her cackling while driving that armored vehicle over and through various obstacles. It's a very Xenia Onatopp type role. i also liked the brutality of the twist involving her, where Gabriel's deduction is correct but perhaps from the way the story plays out we can also deduce he played himself and caused what he correctly thought would occur to actually happen in the end.

Esai Morales was a good choice for the Gabriel part, he's a very good actor who never tips over into absurdity despite this being a potentially absurd role, and i also just like to see an underrated performer being given a juicy part along these lines, going mano a mano with Tom Cruise on top of a train, knife fighting his way across Europe, etc. i feel like perhaps Gabriel didn't need to be a guy from Ethan's past, that was a bit too "Silva in Skyfall" to me, but this film fortunately didn't turn into a therapy session, it just kept moving.

it was nice to see Czerny back in that role, with some good callbacks to his part in the first film. Vanessa Kirby was good too. everyone was good!

gonna be psyched to see how the story wraps up. from what i've read, there was the thought that MI:8 would wrap the franchise up, but it seems like it'll continue on for a bit longer. I hope so, it's probably the only ongoing action franchise i have confidence in as far as consistent QC, the Abrams entry aside.

i almost forgot about it in the midst of the rest of the film, but the opening scene with the Russian submarine is a great one, with such a bleak and haunting final shot.

Yeah as a grim miniadventure it was pretty great (and the actual final shot of the film appropriately fucked up and ominous).

Pom Klementieff

Was not really a fan of this movie, but particularly didn't like her character, tbh. Of course these movies are innately ridiculous, but I'm trying to think of other instances/characters that were as outright cartoonish. She reminded me, yeah, of a few colorful Bond henchpersons (Onatopp, May Day), but also a particular strain of eccentric movie assassins, not just like you may find in the heightened (sur)reality of "John Wick," but, like, Sam Phillips in "Die Hard 3," Lucy Liu in "Payback." Kind of took me out a bit.

"Mission: Impossible: Part Seven: Part 2" bumped to 2025! The future!

I don't know, something like that can't even begin to bother me in this type of movie. They are sort of the American Bond films at this point, to an extent. The outlandishness will periodically come with a territory, and it's all in good fun. I've never been taken out of any of these movies by anything other than III being mostly bad.

xpost -- Ah that sucks but the longer the SAG strike goes on...