#36: MISS IMP: FIN REC

 

STARRING: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett. Written by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Produced by Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise, stunt flying in helicopter Tom Cruise, stunt flying in airplane Tom Cruise, underwater stunt man Tom Cruise. Budget $300-400 million. Running time 170 minutes.

I'vegottobequickcostheresalottocraminandIdonthavetimeforpunctuation.

No, that's not going to work. Look, this is the eighth and, we're told final MISS IM movie and there's a lot to cover but only three hours worth of film time to tell it in.

It starts the minute the screen lights up and then just goes, like a jet-car at 300mph, there's absolutely no time for anything but plot, in this film even when Cruise is not running from A-B, he's running on the spot, seriously. There was a scene that was cut out where Cruise is running on the spot while trying to do a poo, and it wasn't nice. So, Cruise is on cruise-control for the whole film, every problem presented is dealt with bang, bang as it races to the ending. Everyone has their eye on the clock and no time is spent, or wasted, on meaningful silences, pregnant pauses or moments of somber introspection. NO SIR! There's a goddam world to save from a totally evil AI, and quite so in this film because world is literally 3 days away from total global armageddon and nuclear annihilation. In fact, it's hardly surprising Cruise and everyone is running so goddam fast, like me they're just trying to arm-aggedon out of here!

SO. The last time we hung out with Ethan and the gang in MIS IM: De Rec P1, they were up against the Entity - a super intelligent, sentient, AI that had escaped into the real world and gone rogue and a whole bunch of people wanted the tech. Aided by a shadowy character called Gabriel (Henry Czerny), who killed Hunt's first girlfriend in the past. He was a driven, evangelical and deeply fanatical henchman who believed the Entity was going to save the world. Ethan spent the whole film trying to find and hold on to two currant bun keys that when wedged together would open the vault thingie that housed the Entity, which was hidden in the bowels of a sunken Russian submarine, although no one knew where. The film was gripping, exciting and laid the ground work for this, MIS IM: The Fin Rec.

So, in this one, armed with the current buns Ethan heads off to find the sub, evade every single law enforcement officer in the world and try and stop both the Entity and Gabriel before either one of them can do something bad. There's atomic bombs to defuse, hijackings, car crashes, chases, gun battles, knife fights, fisticuffs, and thrilling death-defying stunts that leave you on the edge of your seat. 

So why didn't I love it more? I have to say this isn't a bad film, I didn't fall asleep once, I was gripped and the three hours flew by, but by the same measure I left a little underwhelmed, it was good, but didn't soar, gripping but not insanely thrilling and there were some plot decisions which were very poor, indeed laughable. 

I was frustrated that Gabriel who'd been such a great foil for Cruise is reduced to nothing more than a moustache twiddling cartoon villain in this outing cackling evilly at times to remind us he's evil, but most annoying the Entity which featured so heavily in the last film disappears for a huge chunk of this film and even more maddeningly doesn't have a final showdown with Ethan, sure he's at the climax but I wanted a final confrontation. 

The action is superb but gone was any sense of a team of agents working together to save the world, the film tries and succeeds in tying together the past films in the series, with previous plot devices and story threads cleverly woven into this. But at times this came across as a Tom Cruise: Miss IM: Greatest hits show, with this incredible achievements acknowledged in a sort of film festival sort of way, you have expected Cruise to stand up and accept the award while in the background on the big screen a compilation clip is show of all his best bits, oh wait. That's exactly what happened! 

Look, I love the Miss Im films, well all except the second one, which is an absolute pile of donkey dicks. And in preparation for this one Pet and I rewatched them all, including the second one and I have to say that despite how entertaining this was, it wasn't as good, it didn't roar, it sort of hummed. But that's not to say this was a bad film, it just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. There was too much incident, and too much time was taken in just getting Ethan and his band together for the final act. Indeed it felt that 2/3rds of this was just the premable, which was all too linear, there were no surprises, everything was methodically laid out, every problem was dealt with as the team moved on to the next. Perhaps one of the high lights was the unexpected return of a character from the first film who proves to be an absolute delight. 

However, all that said, this had great stunts, my god, the stunts were amazing, that bi-plane stunt will have you holding your breathe, and that coupled with great action, and some nice character work including managing to make Simon Pegg likeable (and all it took was a collapsed lung), the direction by Christopher McQuarrie is superb, he and Cruise are a great team, the music was perfect and action was good and yet... 

I saw this last week and I've been mulling it over for a week, I've even talked to a couple of critics for their opinion and we all seemed to feel the same way, that it was 'good, but not great'. And alas at the end of the day I really wanted this to be great, to end the franchise on a beautiful high. 

8/10