MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION

Paramount Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 131 Minutes

Click below to watch a movie trailer of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation from YouTube.
 

In Paramount Pictures Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Agent Tom Cruise is going after the mysterious Syndicate that is targeting the members of his organization, the IMF - Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames.

Starring and Produced by Tom Cruise, this fifth movie to the Mission: Impossible films - which takes place immediately after the movie Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - is a fun movie with Cruise, Field Operations Director Renner, computer expert Pegg, and agent Rhames reprising their roles from previous films. This is the first Mission: Impossible film where the IMF team is a veteran of at least one other Mission: Impossible film. Of the films that I have seen in this series, this was the most fun. It is curious that before the movie, they aired the James Bond movie trailer SPECTRE. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is a more fun film than James Bond, with the character relationships providing the fun in Mission: Impossible.

In the movie, Cruise is on the run from the CIA, headed by Chief Director Alec Baldwin, that wants a Senate Oversite Committee to disband the IMF (Impossible Missions Force) after a series of botched operations, and is trying to order Renner to give up Cruise's location. Cruise meanwhile is trying to find Sean Harris. the head of The Syndicate - an international criminal organization - that is escalating a series of terrorist acts as well as targeting the IMF.

During the opening title sequence, which has graphics just like the TV series, there were clips of the movie shown, just like in the TV series of clips of that week's episode. These movie clips did not have any spoilers, but definitely teased what was going to happen in the movie. It was great that the musical theme of the TV show by Lalo Schifrin was all over the movie, which made it feel like a Mission: Impossible episode. Another nod to the TV series is The Syndicate, which was the antagonist organization in the TV series, as well as Cruise receiving his mission briefing from a vinyl record from which the original TV briefings came from.

The movie does have a world-wide feel to the movie as they travel to various countries, just as a James Bond movie does, with locations in London, Vienna, Monaco, Morocco, and Morocco's largest city Casablanca. The movie also had several car chases to make for great action. It is amazing that spies nowadays have to be so electronic savvy when you see all the gadgets that everyone uses. Just as the original TV series and TV series update made use of the latest state of the art technology, the movies do as well.

Operative Rebecca Ferguson was pretty awesome in the movie as someone who you were not sure which side she was on whenever she engaged Cruise. I definitely fell in love with Ferguson as a "bad girl" and I look forward to seeing more of her work.

Cruise hanging off of a plane, an Airbus A400M, was a real stunt with Cruise at an altitude of 5000 feet. The underwater footage is the first film release featuring footage from Arri's new 6.5 Alexa 65 camera. Cruise trained with diving specialist Kirk Krack to hold his breath underwater for three minutes to perform an underwater sequence without any edits trying to defeat a security system.

For the IMAX theatrical release, the movie has a Mission Impossible style SMPTE Academy leader countdown at the beginning of the movie instead of the normal IMAX countdown.

Rated PG-13 for violence, language. Running time: 131 Minutes.

Pancho
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JACK REACHER

Paramount

Rated PG-13

Running time: 130 Minutes




Click below to watch the Jack Reacher trailer.

 

In Paramount Pictures Jack Reacher, former Army Military Police Officer Tom Cruise investigates the mass shooting that former Army infantry sniper Joseph Sikora is accused of.

Based on the book One Shot written by Lee Child, of which the character Jack Reacher is the protagonist, Cruise works with Sikora's defense attorney Rosamund Pike to get Sikora off - despite the fact that Cruise wants to bury Sikora, since Sikora has had a history of going off as a sniper. The title One Shot refers to the sniper motto - One Shot, One Kill.

I thought that this was a slightly above average crime drama movie, although Cruise was not as funny as I thought he would be in this movie. I kept thinking Cruise would be more like his character in A Few Good Men. Cruise is also much smaller than the big series character of Jack Reacher described in the book One Shot. Being a character who fell off the grid added to Cruise's mystique which helped his character of Jack Reacher since Cruise himself was not that funny.

The car chase scene in the movie unfortunately was pretty average, although Cruise did all of the stunt driving. The only good thing about the car chase was the end of the chase. Robert Duvall was great as the former U.S. Marine that assists Cruise. Duvall's character was the funny character that I had expected Cruise to be. Having District Attorney Richard Jenkins being Pike's father adds to the character dynamics of the film, with them being on opposite sides of the legal system concerning Sikora, as the film was actually fairly predictable otherwise. It is curious that Cruise never went into the military law of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but just dealt outside of the civilian law. I think what I liked best about this movie is that you get to know who the victims of the shooting were and not having the people becoming just bodies.

Sadly, the premier of Jack Reacher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - where the movie was filmed - was cancelled due to the mass shooting of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting the day before the scheduled premier. What was even scarier to me was that there were shots fired a couple of days later at my local mall, and not from somewhere across the country.

Rated PG-13 for violence, language, and sexual situations.

Pancho
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Knight and Day

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

PG-13

Running time: 109 minutes
















Click below to watch the Knight and Day trailer.



In Knight & Day, civilian Cameron Diaz is on her way to her sister's wedding - when she bumps into agent Tom Cruise at the airport. Diaz soon becomes an unwitting accomplice for Cruise. Diax goes on the run with Cruise in Cruise's battle against CIA agents.

This movie is a cute, comedic spy thriller cross between Mission: Impossible  and Wanted. Cruise's off-beat antics makes you wonder if he really is a rogue CIA agent or not as he takes Diaz around the world. As Diaz says, "I just don't know what to believe." Aside from what may be happening to Cruise and Diaz, I just did not get the sense of the real ultimate stakes of their actions - of why this mission is so important in the first place as everyone searches for a newly developed power source. Also, while we may know where the Knight came from in the movie, there is no obvious reason why the movie would be called Knight and Day unless you really reach for the meaning.

Rated PG-13 for violence. Running time: 109 minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews