The Critic's Critic: Mission: Impossible III
Posted by David Wilcox on 05.08.2006
Ebert is impossible to please.
I hate to revisit Roger Ebert so quickly, but he really asked for it with his recent review of Mission: Impossible III. He spends the first few paragraphs reviewing the plots of the past M:I installments and berating the mindless zeal of Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt. So Ebert asks:
Why does Ethan risk his life and the lives of those he loves to pursue objectives he does not understand?
For the same reason soldiers take orders from superiors without questioning them. That's just Ethan Hunt's job as an agent of the Impossible Mission Force - to trust those above him and follow their commands. Does that make Hunt an Eichmann? Maybe - but I see no great moral grounds for objection to any of the objectives he receives. If he did stop and question every order he was given, he wouldn't accomplish anything. And he'd be even more annoying, because a talking Tom Cruise is worse than any other kind of Tom Cruise.
In the case of M:I III, Hunt emerges from semi-retirement first to save a beloved pupil, then to avenge her death and nab a major threat to his country's national security in the process. He is not pursuing any inscrutable objectives. But then, he risks his life pursuing the Rabbit's Foot, an object even the audience doesn't understand, precisely because he's trying to save the life of someone he loves - his new wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan). His failure will result in a bullet through her head courtesy of my fellow native son of Fairport, NY - Philip Seymour Hoffman. And with that, we have motivation. But Ebert has a different answer:
The answer, of course, is that the real objective of all the "M:I" movies is to provide a clothesline for sensational action scenes.
Fair enough. Plot does indeed come third - or forth or somewhere back there - in Cruise's franchise star vehicle. But then Ebert really overdoses on the cynicism:
Either you want to see mindless action and computer-generated sequences executed with breakneck speed and technical precision, or you do not. I am getting to the point where I don't much care. There is a theory that action is exciting and dialogue is boring. My theory is that variety is exciting and sameness is boring. Modern high-tech action sequences are just the same damn thing over and over again: high-speed chases, desperate gun battles, all possible modes of transportation, falls from high places, deadly deadlines, exotic locations and characters who hardly ever say anything interesting. I saw "M:I" and "M:I II" and gave them three-star ratings because they delivered precisely what they promised. But now I've been there, done that…"
Easy there, Roger. First of all, there are also theories that the Earth rests on a turtle shell and aliens killed Kennedy - so what's your point? Second, with this review Ebert basically dismisses the relevance of action movies altogether. And this is only the beginning of May, Roger - how are you going to last until August?
M:I III, for my money, was a pretty decent action film despite the silly I'm-a-scientologist-and-that-gives-me-super-powers subtext of Tom Cruise's character. Director J.J. Abrams delivered some solid action sequences tied together by a fast-moving and minimally incomprehensible plot - yet its dialogue wasn't nearly as scarce or tiring as Mr. Ebert would have you believe. Of course M:I III is not a great leap ahead of any prior action movies. But it's not a wholly tired retread either. And yet, Mr. Ebert doesn't seem to care. He may as well have not seen the film - I'd wager he wrote that paragraph before he did. What we have here, ladies and gentleman, is a curmudgeon who won't settle for having two hours of intellectually disengaging fun at the movies. He just can't be bothered with anything that doesn't advance the art form. I'm not saying M:I III does, but damn - it DID deliver what it promised. Just not to Roger Ebert.
