Tom Cruise Has A Death Wish

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The word “Fallout” has been very carefully chosen in the title of the latest Mission: Impossible – Fallout. For some it will reference the major threat that Ethan Hunt faces during his current assignment which involves three nuclear weapons and the inevitable fallout from their radiation. On a deeper level it also references the personal cost of each mission to Hunt himself and the effects that his life's purpose will have on his friends and family. Most excitingly of all though, I think it references the fact that Tom Cruise likes to fall out of shit all the time. I mean sure he tends to hang from things a little more than he falls but Mission: Impossible – Hang Out probably sounds a little too casual for an action movie. The first film began this trend of him falling when he dangled from a ventilation shaft and at one point fell a little closer to the floor than he'd hoped to go. By the fourth instalment things had escalated to the point that he was now falling from the tallest building in the world. He still had a rope attached to him but that clearly still takes balls as I can't even look vertically down from my bedroom window without my arse falling out.

Cinema Needs Faces

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Don't you just hate people and their big punchable faces. It's just a skin-mask featuring their squinty little eyes, fat noses, and a mouth that essentially just acts a delivery system for their ill-informed and unwanted bullshit. Well- not so, according to director David Cronenberg, who argues that “the essence of cinema is a human face speaking”. That might be a bit rich coming from a man who's made a career from mutating peoples bodies and having Jeff Goldblum's dick drop off, but despite my ingrained sense of misanthropy I can't help but agree with him. Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master is a perfect example of this with there being almost no obvious plot and about as much action as you'd find in a horny Nun's bed as she lies motionless, alone, and in denial. Unlike most modern movies, there's no superheroes or aliens, no shared universe or exploding buildings. It's just a freaky looking man with a cleft lip talking to a fat man with a moustache and it's fucking amazing.

Live. Die. Repeat.

Edge of Tomorrow is a film in which Tom Cruise dicks about with aliens and everybody thinks he's mad. What a stretch that must have been for him! Right, I've already talked about the film and made a shit joke so now it's time for me to go off topic. God, I hate my life. Like, it's actually fucking shit. I drive to work where I get bollocked for being crap at my job and then I drive home were I'm bollocked by my step-mum for still being alive. To be honest, I think that knowing how much my existence annoys her is all that's stopping me from driving head on into a fucking wall. Is this getting too grim yet? I suppose it's meant to be a movie blog and not a suicide note so I'll lighten things up a bit. Hey, have you ever noticed Tom Cruise's front two teeth? They should be in the middle of his mouth but they're not. They're actually off to the side for some reason. I promise that once you see it you'll never un-see it ever again. If you thought a cult that rapes its followers’ bank balances before treating them to bullshit secrets about little green men was weird then just wait until you see Tom Cruise’s smile. Oh, and did I mention that I'm only one bad day away from slashing my wrists? Sorry, no- ignore that.. It got dark again. We're here to discuss a film and so that's exactly what we'll do. Have you seen Edge of Tomorrow yet? I'm thinking of sticking my head in the oven. It's a good film. It's about a man who has a really shit time every single day and from the moment he wakes up. How unbearable does that sound? Fuck my life...

Getting Back On Track

In Mission: Impossible 3, Ethan Hunt is no longer a field agent having instead decided to become an IMF trainer. I often wonder what actors draw from for a role but when Tom Cruise plays a man who trains people in the secrets of a slightly sinister and shadowy organisation, I think I can pretty much guess. However he's roped back in to going out on missions when his most prized student is captured by Philip Seymour Hoffman, which just goes to show how good a teacher he must have been if the person who’s learnt the most from him can be captured by Truman Capote. I assume whilst this is going on, his worst student is getting stabbed to death by Julie Andrews with a butterfly knife.

Sadly, his protégées rescue doesn't quite go to plan as the villains have stuck an exploding-bomb thing in her head and Hunt incompetently forgot to check for it. This exploding-bomb thing basically causes her to get a sharp pain in her brain resulting in excruciating agony followed by death and an embarrassingly gozzy eye. If you can't imagine it from that description, then the whole process plays out very much like my actions after a few days without jizzing

It's not just the whispers that are careless.

The rest of the film then involves Hunt running around after a presumably dangerous device known as the Rabbit’s Foot. As a sort of in-joke however, we're never told what this thing actually is. Instead the filmmakers make no attempt to hide the fact that it's a MacGuffin and so exists solely to move the plot along. I should explain for anybody unaware of the term that famously, other examples of a MacGuffin might be the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, the stolen money in Psycho and a kebab/cock combo in the life of George Michael.

No Touching!

In his search for the Rabbit’s Foot, there's one point when Hunt and his team are forced to break into Vatican city to collect clues. The way they do this is very exciting and involves exploding cars, climbing high walls and impressive security disabling devices. Maybe that's how you had to do that back when the film was released in 2006 but these days it's a piece of piss to break into Peado-Land. Either Cruise can use his height to his advantage and dress up as a bleeding choir boy with a limp or now I reckon you could just dress up as a fake Pope. Ever since Pope Palpatine retired and Pope Jeffrey Tambor took over there must be so many new faces there that it's easy to lose track of whatever creepy bigot is now in charge.

However they instead decide to try a different technique of disguising Hunt with a Philip Seymour Hoffman mask. Personally I think this is probably my favourite scene in the film just because of how it starts off ridiculous and then somehow ends up being shockingly amazing. Basically the camera stays on Cruise as he puts on an obviously crappy Leatherface style mask and then smoothes out the corners to somehow become the villain. It's kind of like visiting a magician when one second he's doing shitty card tricks and the next you're so impressed by something they've done that you have to stab them in the heart and burn them at the stake for witchcraft. This then leads to a really cool scene in which Hunt-in-the-mask fights the real man he's pretending to be. So basically what you're left with is a chubby smack-down between two Philip Seymour Hoffmans. Considering an actor fighting himself has happened in such quality films as Double Impact and The 6th Day it's good to see that the star of The Master is as good an actor as the Muscles from Brussels and the Austrian Pervert.

I'm pretty sure that's Jeffrey Jones in suave-paedo mode.

Speaking of The Master, anybody who knows anything about it will be aware that it's a story involving a creepy brainwashing cult that definitely isn't scientology. In that film, Hoffman plays a confident but deluded control freak who coincidentally shares several qualities with L. Ron Hubbard or as he's known, The Captain of the Bullshit Enterprise. It's therefore quite fun to watch a scene later on where Hoffman kicks the living crap out of Hunt. Having seen The Master and knowing about Cruises's love for that weird alien fan club, it's quite fun to pretend that we're watching him being punished by his loving leader for breaking one of their commandments. I don't know if Scientology has any commandments but if they do then I'd have to guess they include, “Thou shall give us all of your money”, followed by “Thou shall not see us for what we are”.

Kidnapping is like a blind-date, only with more surprises...

Aside from Hoffman however another significant addition to the franchise is that of Michelle Monaghan who, as always, is brilliant. I mean she's basically playing the same sassy character that she does in every film she's in but I've decided that I love her so fuck you! In fact, my appreciation for her goes further than simply being a fan and quite deeply into a creepy kind of belief that we should be spending our lives together. Some people sadly never find their soul mate whereas I have to accept that if I did ever meet mine she would definitely issue a restraining order against me and to be fair, I wouldn't blame her.

Although she plays a minor role in this film, her involvement actually alters the second half of the action. The Mission: Impossible Series had been criticised in the past for focusing on Cruises character rather than that of a team as the original television series had done. In the first half of this film however, we're finally treated to IMF working together in a group. That is until Hoffman crosses a huge line by kidnapping Monaghan who happens to be Hunts wife. After that act of shear unforgivable cuntishness, things settle back down into more of a Cruise centred film. I didn't watch the original series so as far as I'm concerned, these films can play it how they like. As long as someone is there to prevent any harm to the woman I'll one day stalk then I don't mind what they do.

So it's probably obvious by now that I think Mission: Impossible 3 is really great fun. Considering the last film dribbled out from the arsehole of boredom, this was the adrenaline shot to the balls that this series really needed. Of course, the man who can be credited for this sudden rise in quality is J.J. Abrams who seems to be making a career out of resurrecting the bloated, grey corpses of previously murdered franchises. Thankfully, he realised that these films are all about a constant barrage of set pieces and silliness and so quickly delivered like a postman on crack. I'm not sure what film he's working on right now but I suspect it'll be quite small after burdening himself with something as big as Star Trek Into Darkness. Whatever low budget film he's presumably mulling over, I wish him all the best of luck and may the force be with him, always!

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Standing Out In A Crowd

In order for a franchise to work it has to stand apart from other similar films within the same genre. That's why romantic movies such as Bridget Jones and Dirty Sluts 3 can survive in the same market together without treading on each other’s toes. They both deal with the subject of romance but with one focusing on the desperation of an unlikable frump and the other seeming more interested in the sensual issue of anal fisting and strap-ons. The same thing happens in the action genre too with several spy franchises all tackling their similar subject in various different ways. James Bond for example is pure escapist fantasy with a heavy dollop of British patriotism enjoyed by all ages around the world. Spy Kids however is more interested in silliness and tends to be watched by bratty little children to shut them up before their frantic single mother drowns them in the bath.

Definitely SHIT.

Mission: Impossible was released in 1996 and was obviously based on the mid-60's television spy show of the same name. Here, Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt who’s an agent with pretty much the exact same personality as Top Gun’s Maverick despite being significantly less gay. Both characters are clearly from the cocky but loveable phase of Cruise's career- it's just that for some reason Hunt does seem less likely than Maverick to have a drawer full of poppers and butt plugs. Oh, and I should probably point out that the organisation that Hunt works for is the IMF which stands for Impossible Mission Force. I mean, considering how dumb that name is I think they should have gone one further and just named it the Specialised Hostile Incident Team or SHIT for short. Having seen Cruise in films like Knight and Day there's certainly no doubting that he's not a stranger to occasionally doing a SHIT job, so why not?

So I'll say right away that I loved Mission: Impossible which I feel has its own style in the overcrowded market of espionage films. Whereas now Bond is brilliantly weighted down by a sense legacy, this by contrast is just pure, albeit silly, fun. Obviously I prefer the Bond films to these but that's only because I'm British and I think to say otherwise should constitute as treason. But like I was saying- at the start, Cruise's films are luckily different enough that the two can easily co-exist. Imagine it as a relationship with the Bond's being the wife you dearly love and the Mission Impossible's being the tart you fuck for fun when pretending to be on a business trip.

Future Bond Villain?

Where Bond has its winning formula of genius, this instead seems to compare more closely to something as light and tricksy as Oceans Eleven. For a start, the plot flies by so quickly that I assume it must be like how a schizophrenic sees the world. One minute Hunt is surrounded by friends and the next his team is all dead and people are tearing their faces off. Whereas most spy films are all about killing or catching the villain this is more like a con movie with nobody knowing who the fuck anyone else is. With Bond it's obvious who the baddy is because they tend to by angry retards with bleeding eyes, metal hands and more nipples than common sense. Here however it could literally be anybody with various people coming back from the dead as though this is a more believable retelling of The Passion Of Christ.

Aside from con movies, the other thing that this film clearly takes its influence from is obviously Hitchcock. I mean I know most things take influence from him because he was clearly a fat, bald genius but I mean specifically North by NorthWest. Both that and Mission: Impossible tell the story of a wronged man on the run from a shadowy organisation and both rely heavily on the use of suspense. In Hitchcock’s case, this involved scenes such as a crop duster chase and clinging desperately to the edge of Mount Rushmore. With Mission: Impossible however it means dangling Tom Cruise from the ceiling like he's in some sort of high-tech sex dungeon and then making him sweat. I don't know how they managed to make him sweat on command but if I was directing then I'd probably just string him up and then start detailing exactly why Scientology is a cult of bullshit. If that didn't work then I guess I could just give him a swift kick to the nuts.

Nice Merkin

Luckily for him though, I unsurprisingly wasn't the director with that damn Brian De Palma beating me to it yet again. As anyone who heard the Psycho music clunkily play during the knife scene in De Palma's Carrie, I think we can safely blame him for the Hitchcockian influence. Having said that, I actually think De Palma is underrated as a director with people forgetting quite how many classics he's made. Sure his films might seem dark and violent but at the same time there's always an undercurrent of humour and silliness. Take for example Carlito's Way which is, for the most part, reasonably serious but at the same time happens to have Sean Penn sporting a hairstyle that looks like an explosion in an 80's pube factory. It's this sense of fun however that I think also helps Mission: Impossible stand out and on its own.

Hope she got what she paid for...

Adding to the silliness, Hunt also gets the stupidest weapons ever, which in this film’s case happens to include things such as exploding chewing gum. I can't be sure but I'm going to assume that product was made in the anti-terrorist department of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. There's also the whole prosthetic mask thing too which is obviously stupid as they're more realistic than Liza Minnelli could manage after millions of dollars of plastic surgery. In fact the amount of times they actually escape a situation by wearing somebody else’s face you'd think this organisation was trained from a survival book written by Hannibal Lector… in which case, I look forward to a future instalment of the franchise in which Hunt learns how to disguise himself as a lady by tucking his dick and balls between his legs and making a dress out of some fat girl’s tits.

Of course no idiot in the world could think that this is an accurate depiction of real life espionage, but I don't watch films for realism- I watch them for a few moments’ escapism in an otherwise drab, boring world. If I wanted to see what real spies do then I'd be better off finding the nearest office and watching some randomer type numbers into a spread sheet whilst double checking their figures. To liven things up a little bit, I could slit my wrists and decide to only seek help once they've finished their shift. Until the DVD player breaks however, I'll probably just stick to watching something like Mission: Impossible which, despite being unbelievable bullshit, is still hugely entertaining. 

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Cruise Control

Did you know that Jude Law was caught sleeping with a donkey for money? I heard the other day that Kevin Spacey got spotted bumming a tramp's dog in the woods. Is it true that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie conceived their last child by having him fist her with his spunk soaked hands?

There are lots of actors and actresses who get written about in those shitty, godforsaken gossip mags. With nothing but page after page of bullshit and sleaze you have to wonder who reads them and who cares? I'm interested in people in the movie world but only in regards to their professional output. In terms of who they're jizzing up, I really couldn't give a shiny shite. As far as I'm concerned, the only useful thing that we could do with magazines like 'Celebrity Cum Shots Weekly' is use them as fiery torches to burn the hacks who write them.

There are loads of different people that seem to have been particularly affected by them but one more so than many others must be Tom Cruise. Throughout the bulk of his career, he's been the centre of one particularly pointless rumour which is that he's gay. According to said rumour, the reason he won't admit to it and keeps getting married is to prevent any damage to his career. I'm putting it out there right now that, that is bullshit. The reason being because nobody fucking cares. Who gives a monkey-fuck if Tom Cruise takes a spunky shaft between the cheeks. As far as his reputation as an actor goes, I'm pretty sure he'll be fine. Weirdly when I go to see a film, it's to enjoy the art of cinema, not to try and second guess who's got the greasiest skin hole and why.

The main reason however, why Tom Cruise isn't staying in the closet to protect his reputation, is because he's a Scientologist. If it's his public image he's worried about then here's my advice, don't jump about on chat shows like a stupid fucking retard and don't admit to believing in dead aliens that live in our volcanos. Being gay these days is a socially acceptable thing to admit to. Being one of the most important members of a freaky E.T. church that's shrouded in secrecy and assumed to be a mad fucking cult is still a little abnormal.

Like I say though even that is irrelevant to what Tom Cruise is. If he wants to dress up as a xenomorph and wank over the night sky then by all means let him do it. What matters are the films he makes. Unfortunately I seem to be in the minority of people that think like that. Tom Cruise's career has been wrongly judged by millions for the last few decades based simply on his first few crappy films and his personal life. Maybe he does have weird beliefs and maybe he did start off by making Top Gun, Risky Business and Cocktail but things have moved on. Surely the work he's done since is enough to justify him as a great actor and not something for us to all stand around chatting about like some sort of fucking Wicker Man style gossip poll.

I'm sure he likes his films to make a lot of cash but I'm also sure that he cares a lot about the quality of those films as well. For proof just take a look at the directors he's worked with over the last twenty years or so. Oliver Stone, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick are some of the most powerful people ever to make movies. I don't think they are likely to be bullied into a commercial decision at the expense of their vision by the midget actor from Days of Thunder. And that's even if he threatens to curse them into the mountains or bum them to death like the magazines said.

Regardless of any of his earlier “show me the money” shit, I love him for two simple reasons: Collateral and Magnolia. Both of these films are literally brilliant and both feature a stand out performance from Cruise. Both are proof as well that he really isn't too worried about being seen as the shiny, clean cut action star that some people think of him as.

Collateral was released in 2004 which makes me feel depressingly fucking old and tells the story of a poor unfortunate cab driver whose next customer happens to be a sociopathic hitman. Throughout the night the cabbie obliviously drives form one target to the next only becoming aware of the situation when like The Weather Girls predicted it starts raining men. Or at least it starts raining one man, onto the roof of his taxi and with a couple of bullet holes in his body. From this point on they continue the task of bumping off a couple of unfortunates with each murder being punctuated by a car ride and philosophical conversations about the meaning of life.

Cruise is literally amazing as Vincent and sails through the film like a slick, silver haired assassin. He's basically Philip Schofield but with a slightly more psychotic ability to kill. In a way this film is sort of like the anti Mission Impossible. Both are action movies in which Cruise plays a hired killer but whereas 'Ethan Hunt' is character designed solely to allow Cruise to show off his stunts, Vincent is much more talkey. With his philosophical views on life and what we should be doing, he's basically a selfish Tyler Durden.

Both Vincent and Durden can see how shit our world is and how stupid we all are. They can both see how we allow ourselves to be repressed by the rules we don't necessarily agree with and how we might accidentally fall into an averagely boring life simply because it's the done thing. The difference is that Tyler wants to change this, he wants to shake up the system, have us all revel in anarchy and be who we want. Vincent on the other hand is quite happy to exploit it for his own gain. When Durden finds a man in a job he hates he shoves a gun into his mouth and tells him to become a vet within the the next few weeks or he'll come back and kill him. When Vincent finds out that Jamie Fox has been a driver for 12 years he simply mocks him for it.

The way that Cruise plays Vincent is as though he's a lone wolf lost in the city. He's hunting for survival in a environment that he doesn't belong in. As things go slightly wrong he starts to look uglier and angrier and any likeable charm that he may have been displaying is instead replaced by a sociopathic need to kill. With his grey hair and sunken eyes Cruise basically looks like how he's going to in twenty years time when the aliens really do land here and just point and laugh at the notion of Scientology.

Likeability aside though there's no doubt that Vincent is cool. He's got an answer for everything, a decent sense of humour and he couldn't give a shit about the consequences of what he's doing. You get the impression that he's not even killing for the money rather because it's simply the only thing that there is for him to do. In todays economy and with jobs being as scarce as they are, a man with that “can do” attitude for work should only be respected in my book.

His performance in Magnolia however is the complete opposite of this again. 'Frank TJ Mackey' is a smug, slimy, misogynist cunt. He's exploitative, defensive and if it wasn't for his shitty past, he'd be pretty much morally unforgivable. Justin Bieber is the kind of celebrity maggot that exists simply to make a lot of people a lot of money. Bieber is an artistic vacuum, a talentless product and a commodity for young girls to drool over before they realise that vaginas are for more than just pissing with. Basically that punchable muppet is the kind of dislikable, money whoring tool that Tom Cruise is wrongly accused of being. I say wrongly because if Cruise was even slightly part of the system that Bieber is he wouldn't have done Magnolia. Think of the audience Bieber aims himself at and then try and imagine how disillusioned they would become if they heard him say lines like, “Seduce and Destroy will teach you the techniques to have any hardbody blonde just dripping to wet your dick.”

Magnolia is a slice of genius and one of the best ways to pass three hours that won't result in a dead hooker and a cocaine addiction. It's a modern epic with one of the best casts of all time doing their best to give the most memorable performance within a particularly mental but heartfelt story. However it's Cruise that runs away with the movie for simply throwing himself into the character without a worry for his dignity or reputation. By the time the credits come up we've seen frogs fall from the sky, a random musical number and a young boy piss himself. Despite this though, most people are still thinking about whether they actually heard that young warrior from Legend telling a crowd of sweaty men to, “Respect the cock and tame the cunt”.

'Frank TJ Mackey' is what people would for some reason call a brave performance. I fucking hate that though as to call a performance brave is to basically admit that you don't understand acting. We're not judging Cruise for the things Mackey says because unless you're remedial it's kind of obvious that they're two different people. The only performance I could think of as being brave would be The Deer Hunters Russian Roulette scene and that would only be if it was done for real. I don't think that playing Mackey was brave because of what it might do to Cruise's public reputation. Rather, I think that it was a good move for him to show off how good an actor he actually is. It's a basic rule that if you shout cock and cunt for long enough we'll eventually forgive any cheese that an actor may have made in the 80's.

Either way though, I guess nothing is going to change anytime soon. The people who read those fuck awful trash magazines will continue to lap up all of the bullshit celebrity sex and misery that is printed in them. Tom Cruise will continue to be disliked by many for reasons other than his films and the world will continue it's downward spiral of stupidity, shallowness and self-destruction. In fact the only celebrity whose sex life should maybe be mentioned is Roman Polanski or Richard Gere's. The day Tom Cruise bums a child or shoves a rodent up his arse is the day I'll show mild but passive interest. Until that day though I'm pretty sure there's a new Mission Impossible to catch up with.

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