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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Ding Dong The Witch Was Killed

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Let's Get Lost

Mission Impossible 2 starts with Agent Hunt hanging dangerously high up on the side of a cliff face. When I was in school, I rarely tried during physical education classes because I didn't give a shit and I'm allergic to pain. However there was this one time that they got some ropes out and tried to make us climb up to the ceiling. I watched the little fuckers in my class showing off by scuttling up them and so decided I'd prove just how easy it was. I jumped up at the rope, grabbed on and began to heave myself up. The teacher presumably shocked by my sudden effort began to cheer me on in a bid to encourage me to keep going. Genuinely surprised at how well I was doing I started climbing higher and higher and higher. Sadly though this boost in confidence was short lived and things suddenly got difficult. Deciding I'd proved my point, I gave up and like a fucking idiot just completely let go of the rope.

I hovered in mid-air for about a second which was enough time to realise that I was probably meant to climb down safely... and then I began to fall. As I plunged towards certain death I was preparing for the inevitable splatter of my exploding corpse when to my surprise I landed comfortably on my feet. Despite having just performed an almost superhuman display of rope climbing it turned out I'd actually only gotten about four inches off the ground before thinking, 'fuck this', and attempting suicide. This is just one of the many reasons that I am not Tom Cruise.

...Something has gone wrong..

People think that Cruise is mental because he worships aliens and belongs to a mad cult. But in reality he's actually mental because as this opening sequence proves he's clearly got a fucking death wish. Despite the success of the first film it's obvious that the main reason for Agent Hunts return is so that Cruise can see just how far he can push himself before being killed in some horrific accident. I say it's obvious as his him doing a few stunts is pretty much the only thing that's carried over from the first film. This has a different cast, director, belongs to a slightly different genre and also unlike its predecessor, it’s massively shite. If the first movie was a great night of cheap cider and mystery-meat kebabs then this second one is very much the next mornings miserable ritual of puking into your hands because the toilet's too far away.

After the twisty, complicated story of Mission Impossible, the sequel sadly decided to dumb itself down so that anything advanced enough to grow fingernails would be able to follow it. I know action films can be stupid but this seriously makes The Transporter Series look like Kieślowski's Three Colours Trilogy in terms of its importance and ambition. The story this time involves a rogue IMF agent stealing a lethal disease called Chimera and that's pretty much it. Presumably because Chimera sounds like a particularly itchy STD, Hunt is tasked with retrieving it which turns out to be about as exciting as watching an old man attempt a four hour yawn whilst scratching his balls.

"Numbers go up to three-hundred?"

In order to accomplish the mission, Thandi Newton is recruited because she's the bad guy’s ex-girlfriend and IMF wants her to fuck the answers out of him. Newton plays a master thief who is so painfully thin that her stealthiness has to be attributed to the fact that she's ninety-percent nonexistent. Also speaking of the villain, he is played by Dougray Scott who here displays about as much acting range as a wet turnip that's been rolled around a barber shop floor. Imagine Gerard Butler but after he's screamed out all of his charisma and had a bump on his already lobotomised head and Dougray Scott is pretty much what you'll be left with.

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it..."

Whilst we're listing cast members it's also worth noting that in the last Mission Impossible blog I pointed out that the idea of spies constantly ripping realistic masks off  their face was a bit Hannibal Lector. Well it turns out I was right as everybody’s favourite psychopath turns up here as Ethan Hunts boss. To be honest I guess being a secret agent would explain how Lector was able to escape a maximum security prison and remain on the run for years afterwards. Hannibal wasn't a genius but rather trained and possibly being protected by the fucking Government. With his youth and skill on his side, if Jason Bourne ever got the taste for face then I think we'd all be fucked.

The film itself was directed by John Woo who’s had a bit of a schizophrenic career over the last few decades. On the one hand he's the director of such action classics as Hardboiled and The Killer but then on the other he also helmed such forgettable clag-nuts as Paycheck and Windtalkers. Sadly Mission Impossible 2 falls into the crappy half of his portfolio and I think I've figured out why. All of his good films where made in China whereas the rubbish ones began when he started working in Hollywood. The problem with this film isn't the action which, as expected from him, is all very fast paced and over the top. It's how long it takes set pieces to turn up and how boring the bits in between are. Like all of Woo's American films, the script is just fucking dull. Maybe- and this is just a theory... but maybe he just can't read English very well. Perhaps this looked like a good script because he only recognised words like, “bang” and “punches”. Perhaps he also misunderstand stage directions such as, “an unbelievable fight scene” and took it very much at face value. Not that I'm slagging him off as I couldn't even attempt to read Chinese with each of their words just looking like a dodgy market version of a sportswear logo.

But where did the dog turd go?

Ultimately though the biggest sin of Mission Impossible 2 is in what it seeks its inspiration from. The previous film clearly borrowed elements from Hitchcock whereas this one unforgivably takes notes from Michael Bay. If ever a film is destined to fail then it's when it aspires to meet the offensively low standards achieved by Bay’s turgid back catalogue of braindead bollocks. There's no doubting that Mission Impossible 2 feels more like Armageddon than North by Northwest which is a huge shame. For proof of that just check out the overly dramatic scene near the end when Hunt confronts the bad guy and you'll see what I mean. He walks into the room following a glowing white dove whilst the villain’s eyes reflect a fire in the room. The scene has all the subtly of a kick to the tits and is sadly more forced than a quick fist up the poop-hoop. If this franchise was an act on a talent show then the sequel would be like watching someone follow Penn and Teller by making some dog shit disappear by eating it. After two long hours the last line of the film is Cruise turning to Newton and romantically saying, “Let's get lost”. Considering that by now they have physically bored the nipples off me, I actually couldn't agree more.

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Every Living Creature On Earth Dies Alone

They say that “your school days are the best days of your life”, which is a bullshit sentiment designed solely to encourage student suicide. If there is anybody reading this that's still in education then please don't worry as that message is thankfully an absolute slab of crap. Don't get me wrong, life will still be a steady stream of bollocks after you graduate but being an adult at least brings with it a protective sense of cynicism. As a kid you look forward to the future in the naïve hope that things will get better, but... they won't. As soon as you realise that then two phrases will inject themselves into your brain and save you from the noose. The first is “go fuck yourself, you piece of shit”, and the second is “oh fuck it, whatever”. Those two sentences and the confidence to say them are the only things that will distinguish the misery of youth with the misery of adulthood. Well, that and your inevitable decay into substance abuse.

Being a teenager for me was a mostly angsty affair, which resulted in a lot of time sitting alone in my room whilst listening to The Smiths and having a post-wank cry. I therefore couldn't help but feel particularly neglected by teen movies such as American Pie and Eurotrip which had about as much relevance with my life as they did an 18^th century whore's. I didn't spend my prom trying to shag about because I boycotted it. I couldn't be fucked spending an over-priced evening with a herd of wankers and I'm yet to regret that decision. In my experience, teen movies in general are seriously misinformed and only add to the unfortunate viewers sense of isolation. I can therefore only assume that either the people making them have absolutely no recollection of growing up, or more likely were spat out of their mothers meaty snapper as a fully formed adult.

Grandma Death

One such film that I thankfully could relate to was Donnie Darko, which rather imaginatively focused on a teenager with more on his mind than getting drunk and spunking. Donnie is a troubled young chap who rather worryingly has been told by a six foot bunny rabbit that the world will end in twenty-eight days. Considering the fact that I can only associate the phrase “twenty-eight days later” with the infected, then my only curiosity would be in why we have to continue our miserable existence for that much fucking longer? However on top of that, the film also involves time travel, random bits of plane falling from the sky and a fair bit of casual racism aimed towards a fat asian girl and the Smurfs. Also, there's a character in it called Grandma Death who I'm pretty sure is played by Peter Stringfellow. In honesty I haven't got a clue what's going on here, but that really doesn't bother me. Life itself was just as obscure when I was Donnie's age, so all that confusion just makes the film easier to relate to. The only things my teen self could reasonably expect in a day was a varying degree of disappointment and a badly timed bone on. It's depressing to notice how little has changed since then.

"Execute Order 66"

There are plenty of theories out there as to what Donnie Darko is really about which include things like it all being a dream or even a schizophrenic hallucination. Some more creative explanations might be that it's either about the second coming of Jesus or more bizarrely is an unofficial remake of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. Personally I don't subscribe to the latter because at no point in this film did my heart break at the image of a half dead mumbling turd. Having said that there's no reason that they can't all be correct to each individual viewer. If you watch Goodfellas and somehow see it as a giant metaphor for the time Pope Palpatine lubed up in devil-shit and exploded out of his own arse and into our dimension, then fine. Where any story is concerned there is no right or wrong understanding simply different interpretations.

My theory therefore is that this film is merely a reflection of how shite it feels to be Donnie's age. I'm not denying that there is a story in there, but for me the important bit is in how each aspect of it acts as a metaphor for being a young adult. If your average teenager gets a tit sized spot on their forehead then they can't help but think of themselves as being the centre of the universe. I'm therefore sure that we can probably relate to Donnie considering that's exactly what he pretty much is. It's also worth noting that he's a suspected schizophrenic meaning that like most people his age he probably feels like nobody understands him. On top of all that, as Donnie advances into adulthood he quickly discovers that fighting against conformity won't get him anywhere. If anybody here has read any of these previous blogs they'll have probably picked up on my hatred of following the herd for the sake of it. Considering how bitter and twisted I now am, I'm sure you can guess that fighting against society's expectations is not working out too well for me.

Hello, Marion...

I suppose the scene which best demonstrates an intolerance for anybody protesting against the norm, would be when Patrick Swayze comes to Donnie's school. Swayze plays Jim Cunningham, a motivational speaker who makes a living from preaching his pure arse-reeking bollocks. This results in a war of words between him and Donnie which ends when the ex-dirty dancer is called “the fucking anti-christ”. To be fair to Jim, he might turn out to be a liar and a pervert but he's hardly Piers Morgan. Personally I've never really liked Swayze because he has the stench of a creepy weirdo about him. However, Jim Cunningham is also a creepy weirdo so I guess this may be his greatest ever performance. I know that he's snuffed it now and you shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but luckily nor can you liable them. So although it would be morally wrong for me to say that Swayze looked like a paedophile, it would ironically be legally fine for me to say that he definitely was one. I don't think he was but I just thought I'd point out that this seems like a loophole that just hasn't been exploited enough. In other news, who'd have thought that John Wayne would turn out to be a raging transexual? Although I'd always suspected that the bigoted star of both The Searchers and Cum Lovers 2 was born with a dangling quim, it still came as quite a surprise.

So yeah, if you're in school now and want something that might help you reflect on your own life then I recommend Donnie Darko. However I'm sure by now that most people will have seen it despite it's originally messy release. The film was scheduled to come out in the weeks following 9/11 but was delayed because for some reason people might not have been in the mood for a story in which bits of plane fall from the sky. If you have already seen it then I guess I'd also suggest you check out Brick, Juno, Kes or just porn. Porn won't help you understand yourself but it certainly helped distract me when I was in my teens.

Welcome to the class of '44

If however you do want something that will perfectly sum up school life, then you should send me some money to fund my own teen movie. If I'm being honest it does play out a little less like The Breakfast Club and a little more like Schindler's List but I think you'll enjoy it. I can't show you a script though because there's no point in writing it until I get your cash upfront. In the meantime, if there was a particular film that helped you endure your youth then I'd be pretty curious to know what it was, simply because it'd be an efficient way for me to harshly judge you. Let's face it, if you're one of those popular freaks who actually could somehow relate to American Pie then I guess this blog won't have meant too much to you. In which case... ah fuck it! Just go fuck yourself, you piece of shit! 
 

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