Poor Tom Cruise. He is one hell of an actor and in what is still probably his greatest performance in Born of the Fourth of July he found himself in a wheelchair-off against Daniel Day-Lewis. (Don’t try to tell me DDL has never given a crap performance – I’ve seen Nine, for Pete’s sake.) Mind you, he came back a decade later with a stunner of abject nastiness in Magnolia. So that’s the Oscar noms taken care of for now. But he is one hell of an auteur – as star and producer he has hooked up with some of the smartest people around, which means he’s pretty smart too. And he knows how to indulge what used to be called the cinema of attractions in any analysis of the early days of the business: thrill a minute, sensation-building, audience-pleasing. He is a properly savvy star with charisma to burn and I love pretty much everything he does. In the fourth installment of the TV reboot, he makes the best episode since the first one (IMHO) and starts by breaking out of a prison in Moscow, gets blamed for blowing up the Kremlin when a competitor rides the coat-tails of his op and then the Secretary of the IMF (and I don’t mean Christine Lagarde) gets offed in front of him … so he’s disavowed. It all gets nuclear and since Cruise is famous for doing most of his own stunts those of us who have vertigo have to avert our eyes when he tackles the Burj Khalifa. Gosh it’s terrific. The way the team is pulled together (Paula Patton, great, Simon Pegg, a bit WTF?, Jeremy Renner, fairly suspect) is efficient, the trickery is marvellous and Brad Bird directs in super kinetic style as you’d expect from a man made in animation.The screenplay by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec is a marvel of economy and they provide really good performing opportunities for both of the main women (Lea Seydoux is one hell of a villain). I love this series and what is even better for us is that episode 5 is probably the best of the lot with a truly promising ending to an endlessly Bond-like scenario … If you’re interested in reading about Cruise as action hero I’ve written a series of articles about his collaborations with screenwriting legend Robert Towne for Creative Screenwriting magazine. They can be found starting here: http://creativescreenwriting.com/mission-impossible-surprising-depths.
mondomovies 