Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is the latest Tom Cruise spy action adventure installment in the Mission Impossible franchise. This time around it involves Ethan Hunt uncovering anti-IMF Syndicate bent on world chaos. Christopher McQuarrie writes and directs this fifth installment.
Edge of Tomorrow is a sci-fi film starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, directed by Doug Liman and written by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth.
It’s about the United Defense Force waging war on an alien invasion in Europe, Major Cage (Cruise) gets plunged into combat, without adequate training he stumbles upon a time loop. Throw in some very hand held camera work, nice visuals and Tom Cruise, and… go!
The good; there’s nothing new here as far as story, but boy do I like it. The aliens are called Mimics, and they’ve got humanity beat, but our newest latest, best weapon is this Battle Suit. It gives the common soldier more fire power, strength and speed capable of combating these mimics. Whenever we have a superior alien force battling humanity, in films anyway, common bullets always seems to be the answer (Starship Troopers, Battle Los Angeles, Battleship…), this time we get a little more firepower, which makes it more believable, although the battle suit isn’t all encompassing/enclosed for protection…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, love or hate Tom Cruise, but the man is a movie star, he carries this film. When we first see him in his pseudo-Marine uniform I first thought… “that hair cut isn’t regulation sir… but this is a world they’ve created, plus we’re in war time so maybe hair cuts aren’t the biggest priority.” But then he’s not a combat soldier, so that makes sense.
If you’ve seen the trailers, then you know that Cage (Cruise) dies over and over again, the film does a great job in explaining how this happens, it’s actually very satisfying, and builds up to how Cage can do what he does.
The bad; the action sequence… why all the hand-held crappy, I mean, camera work?? Did Liman go to the Michael Bay school of crapulence? There’s some great stuff going on, it’s the D-Day invasion of Normandy, but with exo-suits, frikkin’ exo-suits! It looks awesome… yet, I can’t see things.
The trailers give a lot away.
Overall, check it out, go see it on the big screen and enjoy the visuals with a very satisfying story.
Reading up on the production of this film, there were problems with the third act, I like to credit McQuarrie for making the script great. All through the film I had this anime feel/notion, then I come to learn that it’s based on the Japanese light novel (young adult) entitled All You Need Is Kill.
I went to see Oblivion last night. Didn’t get to see it over the weekend, apparently everyone else did…
It’s about Tom Cruise as the last man on earth, sort of, the planet is ravaged and he his mission is to repair the drones that repel the alien presence.
The good; I love the premise, it reminds me of all those post-apocalyptic movies before the eighties, the ones that immediately come to mind are; Planet of the Apes, Omega Man, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running and Damnation Alley. Then more recently Moon.
The production design in creating the world is great. Everything is a variation of white, the equipment, living quarters, clothing… all white. But Tom Cruise plays tech Jack Harper who goes out in to the wasteland so his white uniform is grayish from all the dirt and grime.
Oblivion is directed by Joseph Kosinski, who previously did Tron: Legacy. It’s nice that he got a second chance to direct a movie with a stronger story. This film really feels like a lover-letter to all those previously mentioned movie in the seventies.
The bad; the film does drag in spots, but there’s something about Cruise, he can carry a movie, much like Mc Queen in Bullitt. So I was able to forgive the pacing in areas.
The story is nothing new, there’s a lot of aspects of other movies and stories that we’ve seen here. I know I mentioned this above as something I liked, but it felt more like here’s this movie and then now here’s that movie, the melding needed work.
*SEMI-SPOILER* There’s a twist/reveal at the end. Basically if you’re an uninformed movie goer (a Michael Bay fan *ahem) then you’d be gasping when this plot point reveals itself. I could see this twist coming a mile away, and again, it’s nothing new that we haven’t seen, so I guess I was just predisposed to expect it.
When the revelation hits Harper I find that he buys in to it way too easily. Some might say that was already fighting mentally with what he was doing, so when the truth hit him, it was always something he knew but could never see or hear.
At this point in the movie taking more time to explain the “truth” of what’s going on wouldn’t have been so bad, cause they did take their sweet time getting there. Just felt weird, why take your leisure and then when something important like this comes up we speed right through it? It’s basically told in exposition, which felt very lazy.
*END SEMI-SPOILER*
Overall I enjoyed this movie more than I thought it would be. The visuals are great and Tom Cruise, luv him or hate him, he can certainly carry a movie. Viewing this movie made me want to watch all the other movies that I thought of, so I know that the filmmakers’ hearts are in the right place, cause they like some of the same movies I like.