I enjoyed “Mission: Impossible -- Fallout,” as I’ve liked all the movies starring Tom Cruise as international superspy Ethan Hunt. The franchise has been going for 22 years now if you can believe it, though only six films total. It seems like anytime talk of “Is Tom Cruise’s star starting to fade?” pops up, he quickly runs back for another MI megahit.
“Fallout” is essentially a retread of the last one, again featuring the same villain: Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a terrorist who wants world peace but thinks it can only be achieved by mass destruction and death. Ethan put him in jail in the last movie, but he manages to break out and start mayhem anew.
The new wrinkle is the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), a famous philanthropist by day who is assisting Lane on the sly. There’s a suggestion of an attraction between Ethan and her, though I get the sense any coupling would be of the praying mantis variety. (Google it.)
The various sidekicks are back: Ving Rhames as Luther, munitions man extraordinaire; Simon Pegg as Benji, sort of a nerdy Q knockoff; Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin as Washington politicians tut-tutting Ethan’s methods; and Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa, a British agent who’s been both an ally and nuisance over the years.
Henry Cavill plays a new ally-slash-competitor, CIA wetboy Walker. He and Ethan have a memorable two-against-one fight in a men’s bathroom against a little dude who’s more than a match for them. Of course, their own confrontation is telegraphed so much it feels inevitable.
“Mission: Impossible -- Fallout” is a perfect example of a popcorn movie. It tastes good going down, but it’s empty calories you soon forget.
Bonus features are quite good. These include three separate commentary tracks: one with director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise, another with McQuarrie and editor Eddie Hamilton, and the third with composer Lorne Balfe.
There’s also an expansive making-of documentary, deleted scenes with optional commentary, a musical breakdown of a key foot chase, storyboards and an isolated musical track score.
I’ve felt pretty much the same about all the “Mission: Impossible” movies. They’re great fun, filled with stunts and double-crosses and gunplay and explosions, and at least two scenes per movie of Tom Cruise running. And a week after I’ve seen one, I forget all about it. Now, they all sort of merge together in the mind.
This is apparently the sixth one in the series, and a few familiar faces are back, besides Cruise as superspy Ethan Hunt. There’s Ving Rhames as Luther, reliable wing man and munitions expert; Simon Pegg as Benji, a British tech whiz; Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa, an MI6 agent who sometimes helps Ethan and sometimes chases after him; and Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin as civilian spook leaders, always with the lip and the second-guessing.
Even the villain is recycled from the last flick: Sean Harris as Solomon Lane, a terrorist who wants to rain great suffering down upon in the world in order to bring about global peace, or something. He was captured by Ethan in the previous movie, but as we well know confinement can be a pretty temporary state in the MI series.
There’s two notable inductions of new blood. Vanessa Kirby plays the White Widow, a wealthy philanthropist who’s secretly dealing in arms and all sorts of nasty stuff on the side. She regards Ethan as a delectable snack that might or might not have something distasteful at the center, and she’s trying to decide whether to take a bite.
As the story opens, three plutonium cores have been stolen from Russia. The Widow is willing to sell them in exchange for springing Lane out of prison on behalf of his crew, the Syndicate.
The other newbie is Henry Cavill as Walker, a feared CIA assassin who’s assigned to shadow Ethan’s team and report back on any rogue activities. He’s got a sort of hulking, grim charisma -- a guy who can smile at you and then pummel you to a pulp, depending on the demands of the situation.
Early on Cavill and Cruise share a terrific fight scene in a restroom against a guy they think is buying the nukes from the Widow. The plan is to drug him, then whip up one of those cool insta-masks Ethan’s gang is known for, impersonate him and seal the deal. It doesn’t exactly go that way, and the two spies find more than their match in a dude about half Cavill’s size.
(This is the scene with the much talked-about “fist reload” move, which you can Google if you like.)
Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, returning from the last go-round, gives us a cavalcade of over-the-top action scenes and daring stunts. Many of them recognizably feature Cruise doing his own stunts, which adds to the sense of peril. (He f’real broke an ankle during production, finished the shot and limped out of the frame, and you can tell he ain’t faking.)
There’s one long chase where Ethan pursues some bad guys on a motorcycle, then climbs into a car and immediately finds himself chased by somebody on another motorcycle. Plus a daring duel of helicopters -- both in the air and otherwise -- dank basement shoot-outs, foot races through Paris and London, and a whole lot of other gee-whiz candy.
The action sequences are interrupted by talkie scenes in which the characters set up the next kerblooie part. If you stop and listen to it, it’s pretty bonkers, since people start spouting minute details about things they could not possibly know about.
“We’ve managed to isolate the code on Lark’s electronic wristband so we can track him.” Oh? How did you do that without even knowing who he is, or what he looks like, or who gave him the wristband?
Whatever. These scenes blessedly do not last very long, as the last thing anybody wants to experience in a “Mission: Impossible” movie is copious dialogue. Personally I think they’d be better if they just took out all the plot and had 2½ hours of Cruise running and jumping and doing heroic stuff.
I’ll say this: at 56, he’s giving Cary Grant a run for his money as the star who aged most gracefully. It’s the same with these MI movies, which have a timeless Dorian Gray quality, never really changing much.
More studios are now into the whole world-building thing, notably with the Marvel and DC comics cross-overs, where superheroes have solo films and then team up for group projects. The latest “universe” to hit the big screen is horror-based, as Universal Studio rounds up a bunch of its classic movie monsters and mixes them up.
In theory, I’m all for it. Dracula, the Wolfman, Invisible Man, Frankenstein, etc. having throw-downs in between teaming up? Sounds awesome. But in practice the enterprise is off to a shaky start.
First up is “The Mummy,” starring Tom Cruise in a film that borrows heavily from the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz flicks that debuted almost two decades ago. (Well, technically “Dracula Untold” from 2014 was supposed to be the official start of DU, but the studio has since backed off of that owing to the film’s middling box office performance.)
Tossing an aging action star into what is essentially a remake doesn’t sound like a great idea, and Cruise does his level best as Nick, a soldier/scallywag who’s more interested in treasure hunting than doing his duty. He gets picked by Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), the revived spirit of an Egyptian princess/sorceress, to be the vessel of the reincarnation of the death god, Set.
Their relationship is an energetic mix of smoochy/stabby, which triggered some recollections of past girlfriends.
Annabelle Wallis plays Jenny, an archeologist who teams up with Nick in between ardent prostrations of her attraction to him. Things move along with the usual assortment of big action spectacles and a liberal helping of CGI special effects. Russell Crowe turns up fairly late in the game as a certain doctor with… temper issues.
The movie’s fun at time, but terribly disjointed and half-baked. Marvel and DC spent years germinating their franchises, and based on this film the Dark Universe needs more time in the cooker.
Bonus features are quite good. There’s a feature-length audio commentary track with director Alex Kurtzman as well as actors Boutella, Wallis and Jake Johnson, with the obvious glaring omission of Cruise. He does appear in a 1-on-1 conversation with Kurtzman.
Additional extras include deleted and extended scenes, seven making-of featurettes and “Ahmanet Reborn Animated Graphic Novel,” with more about her descent into the monstrous underworld.
“The Mummy” doesn’t sound like a particularly good idea:
pairing up an aging action star with a creature feature staple that’s been
shambling around in one form or another since the 1930s.
This reboot of the franchise doesn’t do anything
particularly new or exciting, though it works up a fair amount of sweat getting
there. It’s definitely in the mold of the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz romps,
which placed an emphasis on digital effects, humor and light horror.
The role of soldier/treasure hunter Nick definitely falls
outside of Tom Cruise’s groove: likable good guys with a scallywag twist. Here
it’s all scally and no wag.
The girl keeps telling him he’s good guy down deep inside, but
then he does things like flee from the mummy in a van, leaving her behind. But
no, she insists, remember when we were on the plummeting plane and you gave me
the only parachute?
“I thought there was another one,” he confesses.
This refers to one of the film’s more memorable scenes, were
Nick goes down in a plane crash and wakes up in the morgue writhing inside a body
bag, not a scratch on him. It seems he’s been selected by an ancient Egyptian
princess to be his “Chosen One,” who will become the vessel of Set, god of
death, bringing about a reign of evil upon the Earth. In the meantime, the
curse keeps him from dying.
Considering how her betrothed keeps rejecting her, running
away and stabbing her with stuff, you’d think a smart she-mummy would just go
off and choose someone else for the honor.
Sofia Boutella plays Ahmanet, the mummy. She’s visually
arresting but not particularly scary. She starts off as a twisted bug-like
skeleton wrapped in bandages, and gradually gains strength and flesh by kissing
people and sucking out their vital essence, which in turn adds them to her
growing army of zombies.
Her skin is an ashy gray riddled with etched markings, while
a few bones pop out of her wrappings. Most arresting are her eyes, which have
double irises.
Annabelle Wallis plays Jenny, an archeologist who had a
fling with Nick and now considers him a waste of her time. It’s an odd,
mismatched pairing, almost as if they split Indiana Jones into a couple and
made each half resent the other.
Jake Johnson plays Nick’s wingman, Vail, the sort who’s
always urging him to take the safer path, and his advice is never heeded. And
Russell Crowe pops up as a very polite doctor with a mean streak.
You may have heard “The Mummy” is the first picture in Universal
Studio’s “Dark Universe” project, an attempt to revive all their classic
monsters -- Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, Dracula, etc. -- and bind them
together in a shared world like comic book superheroes.
I’m all for it, but based on this movie they’re off to a
shaky start. Director Alex Kurtzman is a seasoned writer/producer marking only
his second stint behind the camera. He lacks visual flair, and has an
unfortunate tendency to shoot the action from oblique angles so we don’t get
the full impact of the gruesome beasties.
The script, credited to Christopher McQuarrie, David Koepp
and Dylan Kussman, borrows liberally from other movies. There’s a fight inside
a truck lifted straight out of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and there are plenty
of visual cues from other mummy movies, such as the creature’s face appearing
out of a sand storm. Also an ongoing postmortem conversation with a friend a la "An American Werewolf in London."
“The Mummy” isn’t a bad movie, just a disjointed one. They
should’ve left this one buried a little while longer until the time was ripe.
American ticket buyers continue to give Tom Cruise movies the stink-eye, but that doesn’t mean the films aren’t any good. Case in point: “Edge of Tomorrow,” a solid science-fiction thriller that didn’t amount to any great shakes at the domestic box office (though it fared better overseas).
The concept is mash-up of familiar ideas we’ve seen in other movies: creepy alien bugs are threatening to take over the Earth, and we’ve got to stand our ground. Cruise plays William Cage, a smarmy advertising exec-turned military spokesman, who finds himself dumped into a massive assault effort without any combat training or experience.
And… he dies.
Not surprising, given his applicable skillset (or lack thereof). What is surprising is that he wakes up, alive, and it’s the morning before the operation. He gives the mission another go. And dies. And tries again. Dies… though he lives a little longer this time.
It seems Cage got infected with some alien goo that affords him the power to travel through time and “reset the day,” a la “Groundhog Day.” So he makes it his duty to keep trying to find a winning solution to the disastrous war plan. He recruits an ally in Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), the gruff war hero he helped turn into a celebrity.
The action scenes are frenetic and absorbing, with Cage having to learn to use one of those cool exo-skeleton/armor thingees that seem so prevalent in sci-fi flicks these days. Director Doug Liman directed the first, and best, Jason Bourne movie, and knows how to keep the main character seem grounded amidst a fantastical backdrop.
The aliens are a bit of a disappointment, resembling balls of metallic tentacles that roll and thrash around the screen. They’re video-game boogums, meant to scare us and be blown away.
“Edge of Tomorrow” has occasional bouts of supreme silliness, but it’s worth a look… or two.
Video extras are OK. The DVD version comes with two featurettes: “Weapons Of The Future” and “Creatures Not Of This World.” Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack and you add another featurette on filming the storming of the beach, deleted scenes, an interview with Liman and an “Adrenaline Cut” of the film’s signature action scenes.
Some people are bound to dismiss "Edge of Tomorrow" as a mash-up of other, better science fiction movies. And there's no denying there are elements of other themes familiar to the genre -- alien invaders, time travel, nifty futuristic hardware, existential questioning of one's identity.
In fact, if someone hasn't already labeled it the love child of "Groundhog Day" and "Starship Troopers," then I'm copywriting the phrase.
But despite coming across as less than original, it's a compelling sci-fi thriller and a solid star vehicle for Tom Cruise. He's taken a beating in the press lately and his last few films haven't fared well at the box office, though I thought last year's "Oblivion" -- with which "Edge of Tomorrow" shares more than a few similarities -- was an exemplary example of the genre.
The kick here is that Cruise's character, William Cage, is thrown into a battle to retake Normandy from the alien bugs, dubbed "mimics." He's had no combat training, and can't even flip off the safety on his weapons. But he strives to persevere against the overwhelming odds and... dies almost immediately. Because that's exactly what would happen to someone in that situation.
Except that he wakes up on the morning of the day before the battle, and has to do it all over again. He lives a little longer the second try, but not much. He wakes up again, stays alive another bit more during the fight, and so on.
It seems that during his first foray, some special alien blood/goo got absorbed into his own system, giving him the same ability the alien overlord has to "reset the day." If things aren't going well for it in the battle, it travels back in time and tries again. Now Cage has the same power to use against the enemy.
The metaphysics and specifics of this are never really explained, and in some ways it's better that the filmmakers don't even try. This is hardcore suspension-of-disbelief territory, so the audience had better just swallow the conceit and move on.
Not only is Cage not a seasoned soldier when his journey begins, he's not even a particularly likeable guy. An advertising flack who lost his business when the invasion tanked the global economy, he was given a major's rank and the job of "selling the war" to young recruits. He was an expert at boosting the cool exo-skeleton "jacket" armor the soldiers wear, and idolizing heroes like Rita "The Angel of Verdun" Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who managed to kill hundreds of mimics on her first combat mission.
Turns out Rita previously had the same ability as Cage, and became an expert killer through hundreds of conquests that were constantly reset. But eventually the power fades, so the two team up to put an end to the hive mind of the aliens before the slaughter on the beach even begins.
If the comparison to "Groundhog Day" seemed a little strange at first, it soon becomes clearer. By reliving the same day over and over again, Cage gets countless attempts to set things right. He saves the life of one of his squad-mates, and maps out the battlefield with Rita in a seemingly futile attempt to win the beach head. He also tries warning his superiors about the disaster about to unfold, which goes nowhere.
There's a lot of action, obviously, but also some unexpected humor and pathos as Cage finds himself growing closer to Rita, only to watch her die day after day. Director Doug Liman ("The Bourne Identity") and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie, Jez and John-Henry Butterworth adapt the novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka by making the main character seem as real and grounded as possible in an unreal and bizarre setting.
If there's a weak spot, it's the aliens, which never really rise above the level of video game threat. Vaguely metallic, they look like balls of tentacles that whirl around the fight, not unlike those rubber Koosh Ball toys. They're just targets waiting to be blown up, and never seem to gather any real power of menace.
Still, "Edge of Tomorrow" is clearly a better-than-average science fiction thriller. Even if it steals from other movies, at least it borrows from the best.
Poor Nicholas Hoult. The young actor has the dis-privilege of starring in two of the year’s most underrated films.
First was the whimsical horror-romance “Warm Bodies,” which didn’t cause too much of a ruckus at the box office. And then came “Jack the Giant Slayer,” an action-heavy take on the classic beanstalk tale that bombed, despite lavish production values and a budget approaching $200 million.
It’s a shame, because “Jack” stands much taller as a piece of pure entertainment than similar movies like “Oz the Great and Powerful” or “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.”
Hoult plays Jack, a humble farm boy whose life goes on a wild ride after the magic beanstalk carries the beautiful princess into the clouds. It seems the giants were banished there eons ago by the humans, and their two-headed king has half a mind to seek his heaven on earth.
Stanley Tucci, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor and Ian McShane nicely fill out the cast as, respectively, the villain, the princess, the dashing knight and the gruff king.
But the real stars are the computer-generated giants – great, hairy burping beasts whose brutish manners and seeming lack of a feminine gender make their abode seem like the ultimate oversized frat house.
Director Bryan Singer, a veteran of the “X-Men” films, keeps the mood light and the action scenes coming at a furious pace. A great many men and animals get squished underfoot by the less-than-graceful giants, and the CGI captures the mayhem in all its glory.
“Jack the Giant Slayer” is a fun, goofy, giddy ride that never dares to take itself too seriously.
Unfortunately, the film’s lackluster performance in theaters may have contributed to a paucity of goodies for the video release. The DVD comes with a few deleted scenes and a gag reel. Upgrading to Blu-ray adds the “Become a Giant Slayer” interactive feature, and that’s it.
Just a short review here today; Joe Shearer is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so head there to get his complete write-up.
There sure is a trend lately of turning children's fairy tales into splashy CGI action spectacles. Last summer's "Snow White and the Huntsman" was the testosterone-ized counterpart to "Mirror, Mirror." Earlier this year we had "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," a title that suggests how successful it would be. Now "Jack and the Giant Slayer."
All these movies have employed the same methodology: Take a well-known (and conveniently public domain) story, punch it up with huge action sequences, add scary boogums rendered with computer animation, and then slather it all with a dark-and-grimy look and mood.
"Jack" is easily the best of the lot, perhaps because it doesn't take it self quite so seriously. Yes, there are some profoundly silly moments, but the cast and crew seem to recognize and embrace them. Stanley Tucci as the titular villain is practically doing a stand-up routine in medieval garb.
Nicholas Hoult is by design the least interesting character in the picture as Jack, a pleasant, placid farmboy stand-in for the audience in this high-flying adventure. There's a beautiful princess -- of course! -- played by Eleanor Tomlinson who's in need of rescuing. Ewan McGregor has a nice supporting turn as the plucky captain of the guard, and Ian McShane is around to do that growly thing that McShane keeps getting called upon to do.
The giants are the real stars of the movie. Thirty feet tall, hairy, lumpy and barefoot, they stroll about their kingdom in the skies, having been banished there by a mythical human king who wielded a magic crown to command them. They spend their days eating sheep, picking their noses and issuing troubling sounds and smells from various parts of their bodies.
Basically, it's Big Bachelor Heaven.
Anyway, those pesky magic beans turn up, accidentally get dropped in some water and grow into a massive beanstalk. Unfortunately, the princess is trapped inside Jack's house at the time and gets carried into the sky. The beanstalk also provides a convenient mode of transport for the giants to come back down and wage destruction.
Bill Nighy does the voice of the giant general Fallon, who has a second head that is not quite as developed. The little one mimics the speech of the big one, but in slurred, halting words. It's almost like the giant king having his own jester permanently attached to him, whispering idiot nothings into his ear.
Director Bryan Singer stages clean, thrilling action scenes and encourages his cast to keep the mood light. And the CGI melee is decently gruesome in a PG-13 sort of way, with plenty of unfortunate extras getting squished underfoot by giants or become fodder for their craving for man-meat.
"Jack the Giant Slayer" is a big, goofy thrill ride that manages to metastasize its fairy tale legend without getting too full of itself.
From what I understand, "Jack Reacher" is based on a series of books by Lee Child about a wandering ex-military badass who roams the countryside meting out justice with only the clothes on his back and a toothbrush to his name. Tom Cruise, handsome as ever after recently turning 50, looks like Reacher also has a small army of makeup artists and stylists to give him just the right zhuzh before every fight scene.
He's so smiley and smirky, he practically twinkles. It's one of those movies where whenever the hero walks into a room, every female stops what she's doing to stare at him, like a ribeye being waggled at the pack of solves from "The Grey."
It's a nice action star vehicle for Cruise, though the storytelling is often stolid to the point of stiffness. It plays out like a TV crime procedural with regular interruptions for combat, gradually ratcheting upward from hand-to-hand to assault rifles.
Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote and directed the adaptation, takes his own good time getting things rolling. But once the action gets pushed into high gear roughly midway through, it's a fast-paced thrill ride the rest of the way.
The story's a little zany and not particularly coherent. An ex-Army sniper named James Barr (Joseph Sikora) appears to suddenly snap one day and randomly shoot five strangers in front of the Pittsburgh Pirates stadium. A sharp local police detective named Emerson (David Oyelowo) manages to put the pieces together, including recovering a quarter with Barr's fingerprint out of a parking meter, and makes the arrest.
Before he's attacked by other prisoners and conveniently put into a coma, Barr scribbles "Find Jack Reacher" as his supposed confession.
Reacher, we soon learn, is a ghost. A top military policeman, he suddenly resigned after 20 years in the Army to roam the land, like Caine sans kung fu. He has no fixed address, owns no possessions other than his clothes and a few incidentals, and apparently gets by using his military pension for bus tickets and cheap hotel rooms.
There's a great scene where Emerson and his boss, District Attorney Rodin (Richard Jenkins), are discussing the mystery of Reacher. Usually in these sorts of movies we would immediately cut to a cool intro where we meet the guy they've been talking about doing something astonishingly cool. Instead, Reacher himself walks in the door right at that moment, offering his services.
He gets the brush-off, but Rodin's daughter Helen (Rosamund Pike), who's been appointed as the shooter's attorney, lures him in. It turns out Reacher investigated Barr a few years ago when they were both in the service, but couldn't quite pin the crime on him.
Now he wants a second crack ... until events reveal that Barr may not have been the assassin after all.
It's all confusing and uneven, having something to do with a mercenary corporation that moves from town to town, sucking up government contracts via bribes and intimidation. Soon you learn to stop worrying about the story and just enjoy watching Reacher dispatch his foes with cool, collected aplomb.
Werner Herzog, the great German movie director, turns up as an enigmatic baddy with only a single eye and only slightly more fingers. Herzog is a hoot relating the story of how he lost them, managing to be both goofy and chilling at the same moment. It's like a parody of an action-movie villain, and yet totally effective.
The action scenes are crisply edited, particularly a standout car chase sequence where Reacher is pursuing the bad guys, while in turn the police are pursuing him. As is obligatory in movies of this ilk, Reacher acquires a classic muscle car and then proceeds to slowly destroy it.
The final showdown at a mine pit is similarly well-executed, where Reacher gets an assist from an old Marine sergeant played by Robert Duvall. He and Cruise have a giddy repartee, and the pairing is winning.
I wish I could say the same for Pike, who spends the entire movie wearing a slightly startled expression, as if she can't believe she's starring in a movie with Tom Cruise.
"Jack Reacher" is kind of a trashy movie with A-list stars and production values. It ain't any great shakes, but for what it is, it does it effectively.
It seems like most of my video columns lately have spotlighted movies I felt got a raw deal: "127 Hours," "Morning Glory." Well, I'll continue the roll: "The Tourist," flayed by critics (20 percent on the Tomatometer) and largely ignored by audiences -- at least American ones; it cleaned up overseas -- is a thoroughly enjoyable bit of popcorn moviemaking.
This spy thriller starring Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp and the city of Venice is a skillfully-made bit of weightless piffle. No, it will not become a fixture in the annals of cinema. It's a fancy sundae, a concoction of sweet thrills and empty calories. We shouldn’t take too long admiring it, because it’ll melt if we do.
Just scoop it up, enjoy the sugary rush and smile.
Depp plays Frank Tupelo, a sad-sack math professor from Wisconsin riding the train to Venice for a lonely vacation. Onboard he meets an exotic, dangerous woman named Elise Clifton-Ward (Jolie), who brazenly flirts with him. It's soon revealed that she's a spy on the run, who's merely using Frank as a patsy.
The rest of the movie is one long bit of chase-chase, a classic Hitchcockian convoluted plot of double-crosses and MacGuffins. Something about Elise's long-lost lover duping a British mobster out of billions, with Paul Bettany starring as the unctuous spymaster hunting everyone. There's a glamorous formal ball, a boat chase or two -- it's Venice, how could there not be? -- and some rooftop hi jinks.
It may not make much sense, but the ride is brisk and fun.
Video extras are good no matter what format you choose.
The DVD version has a feature-length commentary track by director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, a reel of outtakes and goofs, an alternate title sequence done in animation, and two featurettes on staging the fancy ball scene and the film's take on Old Hollywood glamour.
The Blu-ray edition includes all these features, plus three more featurettes: "Action in Venice," "Canal Chats" and "Tourist Destination: Travel the Canals of Venice."
No digital copy of the film, though. Now that is a raw deal.
I enjoyed "The Tourist." It's a skillfully-made bit of weightless piffle. No, it will not add anything memorable to the cinematic lexicon, or the filmographies of its stars, Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. But has its charms, and they are not to be easily dismissed.
The film is directed by German filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck -- I had to check his name six times to make sure I had the spelling right -- who directed the outstanding film, "The Lives of Others," in 2006. (If you haven't seen it, get thee to a Blockbuster, or your Netflix account.) The film is gorgeous to gaze upon, with its loving, almost fetishistic ogling of the city of Venice. If I were working for the Venice Visitors Bureau, I'd be pre-ordering copies of the DVD by the barrel full.
For viewing pleasure there is also Angelina Jolie. I commented to some of my fellow critics after the screening that watching Jolie is practically a sustaining entertainment unto itself. If a movie consisted of just footage of her walking around her house, doing chores and such, I'd probably watch it. Yes, I've heard people (mostly women) comment about the strange, sinewy contours of her body and how they don't match her face. Personally, I think that's part of her appeal -- she has an otherworldly quality. She's like Galadriel from "The Lord of the Rings" -- so beautiful it is in some ways terrifying.
Johnny Depp is not nearly so lovely -- after decades of defiance, his boyish face is finally starting to swell and droop a little -- but I adored the sad quality he gave to his character, Frank Tupelo, a community college math teacher from Madison, Wisconsin. Frank is a mark, a patsy. Elise Clifton-Ward (Jolie) chooses him to sit next to on the train from Paris to Venice simply because he matches the height and build of another man. Elise, who you may have figured out by now is a spy, is using Frank as a decoy to convince the small army of other spies and gangsters tailing her that Frank is the man they're after.
But she begins to feel badly for flirting with him, because Frank is such a sweet sad sack of a man. He smokes one of those fake electric cigarettes so he can get his nicotine fix without annoying others, wears his hair long and his beard short, and favors clothes that resemble what The Tramp character dresses like whenever he strikes it rich in one of Charlie Chaplin's movies. Frank tells Elise that his wife left him, though the spies -- who are constantly photographing and checking everything -- soon learn that she died in a car accident.
The plot is a classic Hitchcockian one built around false identities and double-crosses and a MacGuffin. In this case the red herring is Frank Pierce, Elise's former lover and the one everybody is after. Shaw, the British mobster (Steve Berkoff) Pierce stole billions of dollars from, wants his money back and a pound of flesh. The British government, with the aid of the local Italian police, wants Pierce for back taxes -- though how a government can tax stolen money is a bit unclear. Paul Bettany plays the unctuous spymaster pulling all the strings.
The story makes little sense, but it's not supposed to. There's a big ballroom scene, simply so we can look at a lot of gorgeous people dressed to the nines. There's a boat chase or two, because it's Venice, damnit, and not having one would be like setting a movie at Niagra Falls and nobody goes over. There's a big surprise ending, though if you're cleverish you'll have guessed at it long before it arrives.
You've probably guessed by now that I'm not really interested in reviewing this movie, but I like talking about it. Maybe that's because it's like a fancy sundae, a concoction of sweet thrills and empty calories. We shouldn't take too long admiring it, because it'll melt if we do. Just scoop it up, enjoy the sugary rush and smile.
I found it really interesting that in this movie, wherever Angelina Jolie goes, every single man (and many of the women) stop whatever they're doing to stare at her. I don't mean sneak furtive glances, but stop in their tracks, turn their heads and watch as she walks by. It actually grows to be comical. I mean, I just wrote a few paragraphs ago about how I think she's so hubba-hubba, but c'mon -- the entire world doesn't halt just because a pretty girl is in the vicinity.
It reminds me of some feminist film theory I read back at NYU that had to do with looking. The camera gazes at women in much the way that men do, the thinking went, and it becomes a game of ping-ponging voyeurism: We watch the woman being stared at by the men, and she's aware of their gaze and responds to it, and so forth. I thought it mostly hooey, but they'd have a field day with this movie.
I'll keep going. Jolie's other big movie this year was "Salt," in which she also played a spy. There was a scene early on where she has to escape out of the CIA building where she had been a double agent, and there's a long sequence where she gets trapped outside on a ledge, barefoot after dumping her unwieldy pumps, and we get quite a leering look at her legs. I remember a lot of female observers saying the whole setup was just an excuse to show off Jolie's assets. Maybe so.
Except in "The Tourist," Johnny Depp gets stuck in almost the exact same situation: On the run, out on a ledge and traipsing across rooftops without shoes and wearing only his PJs. So there. Although I'll admit Depp's legs aren't as comely.
