Contradicting Popular Opinion:
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks
Intro
Last year, one of the big stories of the film world was the under-performance of M:I:III. Analysts were all over it. The movie didn’t do good box office because of Cruise’s bad press. The film didn’t make a lot of money because it was made by a TV director. People didn’t go to see the flick because of the presence of 2 colons in the title.
And so on.
Just today, I used one of my free blockbuster rentals on M:I:III in order to further investigate this phenomenon. I think I have cracked this case. I think I have solved this difficult puzzle, unwrapping it from its enigmatic cocoon and drying off the secret sauce.
Mission: Impossible III would have made more money if it were, in any way, good.
M:I:III
The Mission: Impossible series is a bit odd. Except for Tom Cruise’s character, each movie is completely different from the others. The only comparable series that I can think of would be the Alien franchise. The main discrepancy between the two sets of films is that the first two Alien flicks are good. The first Mission: Impossible flick is a sleep inducing series of locations and convolutions leading to something or another on a train. It was made by Brian DePalma who has, on occasion, been able to convince people that he can tell a sphincter from a hinge joint. The second M:I was a derivative and vaguely insulting lesser effort by John Woo. M:I:III attempts to blend the incomprehensibility of the first film with the vapidity of the second and succeeds miserably. It is truly a painful cinematic experience, akin to receiving a series of paper cuts between the webs of one’s fingers.
Let me sum up the plot for those who haven’t seen the flick. Tom Cruise is retired from active spy field duty, and trying to settle down with some chick named Julia. Morpheus and the guy that does the voice-overs for Mastercard pull Cruise out of retirement to save TV’s Felicity. Cruise is able to unkidnapify her, but in the process Felicity’s brains explode inside her skull in a manner completely unlike the awesomeness of Scanners. This somehow leads Cruise to assemble his crack team of waifish super-spies (and hacker Marcellus Wallace) on a series of missions: improbable in order to stop bad guy Truman Capote from selling a plot device to, well, nobody in particular. Meanwhile, he must rescue the now hostage Julia, expose a mole in the Impossible Mission Force and save time to utter such badass action catchphrases as, “Humpty dumpty sat on a wall.”
This movie is so goddamned stupid and boring that I thrice lost the will to live during its run time. Eventually, I was able to distract myself by imagining how the sets would play as stages of Elebits and by thinking of things shaped like Tom Cruise’s nose. M:I:III has got bad physics, impossible gadgets, jumbled action sequences, stupid plot devices, lame attempts at comedy, a complete disregard for logic, flat characters, stiff acting, and that cocksucker from Match Point. I hate that asshat. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s villain is about as intimidating as a loaf of bread. Hoffman sounds bored during most of his performance, but still outshines the rest of the “just reading lines” cast.
This movie was thrown out of my DVD player.
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