=^..^= (Mission Impossible (DVD))

Name: wampyrii

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Product:	Mission Impossible (DVD)
Date:	15/11/02 (54 review reads)
Rating:

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Hollywood has tried unsuccessfully to make numerous James Bond style movies and failed. Failed because Bond movies are essentially crap(don't argue, you know it's true) as well but they work because the debonair Englishman has been taken to so many people's hearts and we're all able to forgive them as being Bond movies and therefore above the usual criticism. "xXx" is the most recent attempt to give the US an American James Bond in the form of extreme sports thrill-seeker Xander Cage(played by Vin Diesel) but before then came Mission Impossible, a blockbuster adaptation of the rather more entertaining 60s TV show of the same name, which gave us Tom Cruise in the Bond styled role. Yes Tom Cruise. Sigh.

Anything with the ridiculously self-obsessed Mr. Cruise in it immediately goes down a star rating for me and is guaranteed to have me avoiding it until it hits the video shelves or TV screen, sorry, I think he's an egotistical wanker and I find his 'acting' leaves something to be desired. Must do, as all I see in each of his movies is an egotistical wanker with a different name and a different story. This time, it goes by the name of Ethan Hunt, a member of the IMF(Impossible Mission Force), a team which carries out, umm, impossible missions I suppose. This time, the IMF has been told to intercept a disk which contains a list of names which could expose all the US's undercover agents, but the job goes bad and all of the team except Hunt, Jim Phelps(Jon Voight, head of the IMF) and his wife Claire Phelps(Emmanuelle Beart...a French actress who looked like she had a promising future until Hollywood got hold of her) end up dead leading those in control thinking Hunt is the rat in the chicken coop and wanting him brought to justice. Of course he isn't so he has to clear his name by exposing the real rat...

...the real rat being blatantly obvious to anyone with a single ounce of intelligence from very early on
indeed.

The problem with Mission Impossible is that not only is it a crap movie (and it is by the way) it also has absolutely bugger all aside from the name and a few slight asides, to the original source material(or at least, not as I remember it!) so there is nothing for fans of the series to sink their teeth into either. This isn't always a bad thing, as director Brian de Palma proved with his last TV to movie adaptation The Untouchables but smacks a little of cashing in on a built in audience in some respects and opens up an already poor movie for further criticism in others. Mission Impossible would have functioned just as well under an entirely different title and no one would have compared it to the original show...it's jumping on a bandwagon at it's worst. That's the least of its, and your worries of course.

The characterisation here is appauling. You're thrown straight in to the action, learn nothing about the various characters aside from good guy/bad guy roles and that's your lot. Faceless, suited non-entities abound as Tom Cruise, as the lead character, struts, smirks and preens his tailfeathers like the pompous ass he is making him even easier to dislike in case you needed any other reason to do so, whilst the rest are lame stereotypes or simply faceless men and women in suits and you'll care nothing for them. Aside from Cruise, who you're meant to sympathise with but the arrogant attitude makes you despise, I can't remember a single thing about the other characters. I know they were there, but that's about it. I know Cruise was there too and I knew I'd be disappointed because he'd inevitably not get the bullet in the head smug, hateful characters are meant to get in this kind of thing to leave an audience on dubiously induced a high.

The script is inevitably appauling and the plot served up by the inept screenwriters is more 'holy' than the pope's oldest pair of Y-f
ronts. Perhaps watched deaf and lobotomised you might get something from the eye candy action sequences which come all too infrequently to break up the otherwise incredibly dull storyline but otherwise you've got to put up with a story which increasingly makes less and less actual sense(it's not complex of clever by the way, it just loses itself) and has less and less point as it progresses.

Mission Impossible in a nutshell is this: a big budget blockbuster which sold itself on a few computer enhanced stunts, a respectable cast(despite the faceless performances it does boast the likes of Vanessa Redgrave, Jean Reno and Jon Voight amongst others) and a false promise of an entertaining nostalgia trip. Ultimately it looks as though I'm in the minority for hating this because everyone else seems to have been sold on the ocassional big stunt but frankly, it bored my arse off and I couldn't possibly recommend it.

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