'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol'

Are We Still Doing This?

Threat: Nuclear Armageddon. Saviour?: Tom Cruise. Some tall buildings off which he will hang in some sweaty-palm moments interspersed with gunfire and martial arts punchups. Ready? (I'm over it, baby.)

The fourth installment of Tom Cruise's pet series is actually better than the previous installments. It's actually a bit of a surprise. None of the previous films were terribly compelling before but this one raises a pulse. I dubbed the first one Mission Improbable, the second Mission Imbecile, the third Mission Improvisational but this one actually earns its Mission Impossible moniker properly.

What's Good About It

It's a feature of these movies that they always have some hairy aerobatic thing off the tops of tall buildings. The one in this one is actually impossible and exciting. The worst one was the one in Sydney (we can all blame Nicole Kidman for that one). The weirdest one was the one in Shanghai. Anyway, it's good in this one exactly because it's so outlandishly impossible.

Going stronger on the teamwork thing is better in this film; even better that the third. They also left behind Ving Rhames who only makes a cameo, but in turn the unit seems sharper rather than know-it-all.

What's Bad About It

The actual mechanics of what holds the plot together is pretty weak, complicated and in need of a lot of exposition. At it's core, it's a bomb that needs defusing, but somehow this turns into a re-run of the "Cold War Going Hot" threat. I know in real life Putin's a bit of a dick, but we're really too far distant from those days to feel the threat. Even when a nuke is flying through the air headed for San Francisco, it's not terrible threatening. If the Cold War was well over in the first movie made back in 1996, then 15-16 years on, this movie is just not that immediate.

I also think the mode of action movies has moved on significantly since 1996, what with the rash of superhero movies and LOTR trilogy and other assorted excitements. The kind of action going on in this film just looked old - and not even 'cool retro' old, but tired and old. In short, it's outmoded and antiquated.

They flip a couple of cars in the stunts this film. They flip a whole city-load of cars in 'The Avengers'.

What's Interesting About It

I'm surprised Tom Cruise wanted to go another round as Ethan Hunt. These films have a weird dynamic because the original TV show was about teamwork while the movies have been about Ethan Hunt, the super agent that can solve most any problem on his own. Every film has some kind of team, but the team never quite gels because there's not enough screen time to do that kind of work because everybody knows it's all about Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt. He's his own worst enemy when it comes to these films.

To put this into perspective, a movie where Tom Cruise plays the smiling leading man and wins the day sort of started in the mid 1980s. He sort of put an end to it with 'Vanilla Sky', but it's been pretty weird since. The bloom of youth is gone, but also the charm of his 30s are long behind him. He looks haggard in this film. He can still do the stunts but the martial arts bits - never his forte - looked really s l o w.

I'm sure he feels like he's up for it. I just don't think his fans would agree.

Nuclear Arsenal Going Astray

The polemic of the rogue nuclear weapon has been around for a long time. 'Goldfinger' is built around a plot to irradiate all the gold in Fort Knox. Had they stuck around for a decade, the need would have disappeared because Nixon ended the Gold Standard and therefore the necessity to keep that gold in Fort Knox. Kubrick's  'Dr. Strangelove' is all about a rogue Bomber with the bomb which would go on to trigger nuclear Armageddon and Mutually Assured Destruction, and of course that one gets through. It happens a lot in cinema history.

It is easily arguable that there is actually a tradition of these films. The best of the bunch for me would be 'Crimson Tide', where the protocols for firing nuclear weapons from a submarine get a good working over, while 'Broken Arrow' provided us with a glimpse of how prone the world is to such scenarios if insiders were at play.it's not as good, but it has the bare bones down. Activation codes. Acknowledgements. Security clearances. Protocols. Keys on chains and colour coded lanyards. Numbers on the screen in that old style computer font counting down.

This film reruns the insider scenario without really explaining how this fictional IMF is part of any government. So the film proceeds with the problem without adequately explaining how the problem came about - but expects the audience to cotton on quick and therefore not ask too many questions. It's really interesting that a film proceeds on that basis, without it being a parody or satire.

The Kremlin

Back during the Cold War, we never got to see what went on in the Kremlin. These days, they're inviting Hollywood into film there, so we get an eyeful of the place in this film. I don't know if they really have those underground tunnels or even corridors with red carpet, but safe to say the ballroom and courtyard got a good showing.

It goes to show how far in the past the Cold War is these days. Even all this speaking in Russian on the screen in Hollywood movies is a new development. Tom does it, Simon Pegg does it, at one point the subtitles come up in Cyrillic alphabet and then swap over into English. Scarlett Johannson is doing it in 'The Avengers', Vin Diesel was doing in 'Babylon A.D.'; speaking Russian on the screen is all the rage.

It's as if Russians are the new best friends. I guess they would be if they're inviting film crews in to the Kremlin. I guess Sting was right all those years ago, they love their children too.

Movie Doubles

Apropos To 'Rambo'...
The last 'movie double' I did stretched me (and credulity) a bit so I'm going to handle 2 films with at least a modicum of common concern. Today's movie double combo is 'Charlie Wilson's War' and 'Lions for Lambs'
Coming out of watching Rambo and reminiscing about the 1980s and the war in Afghanistan, it seemed appropriate to at least look at what other texts were floating around at the moment to explain the mess, so to speak.


The Fighting In Afghanistan

Afghanistan is one of those places where you grow up thinking one day they'll stop fighting. The problem is that the fighting has been going on for so long, it's become all they know. As demonised as it was at the time, the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan was fueled by the constant irritation of Afghan conflicts spilling over into mother Russia over the northern border. A little like how Chechens fight on so close to Moscow is still a irritant.

In a sense, the world jumped on the Soviets because they were communists and chose to ignore why they might drive tanks over the borders in the first place. Certainly, we would not expect the Americans to drive over the border into Mexico just because of the drug trade irritation, but in the 19th century, they did, and that's how they got California and Texas. The point is, the Afghan War for the Russians started in 1980. That's more than way over half of my life that conflict has ripped Afghanistan.

If what the 'Rambo III' movie showed was a naive pro-resistance, anti-communist posturing, 'Charlie Wilson's War' reveals that the US Government was operating with about the same idiotically simple schema. So great a perceived threat was the Soviet Communism, the US government showered the Mujihadeen with weapons with which to fight the commies. They didn't quite need John Rambo, but they sure sent a whole lot of special forces types to deliver these weapons to these people to fight the proxy war. Indeed, it was this kind of ex-military bravado of Congressman Wilson from the second ward of Texas, that culminates in the Russian retreat.

The film also covers the aftermath, where Charlie Wilson is unable to secure any money to rebuild the war-torn nation - thus laving Afghanistan to the dreadful civil wars of the 1990s.
By the time the story has moved on to the present day, it is America that is now stuck in Afghanistan fighting the war that the Russians had fought. Does this remind people of something? yes, it reminds us of the Vietnam War - ad this is where Robert Redford steps in with his film, 'Lions For Lambs'. What is clear from his film is that as well-intended as it might be, America has not really come to grips with the war it is fighting in Afghanistan.

Echoes of Vietnam - A Little Digression

Just to be a little pedantic I want to run past a pet theory of mine.
My theory goes like this: The greatest threat to the US in the 20th Century was ideology, and the two main ideologies it confronted were Fascism and Communism. In fact there are indications that FDR's long presidency fomented the conditions whereby World War II took the shape that it did. In part it pushed Japan in with the Fascists, and then aggressively blocked trade in order to provoke the attack on Pearl Harbor - yes, the Day that Lives in Infamy, that FDR worked very hard to produce. Admiral Yamamoto might have been the star villain of the day, but FDR pretty much produced that show.

The end result was Japan surrendering to the USA, and thus reverting to the Constitutional Monarchy that it was as late as 1930. Japan's problem was that after Russia it was the country with the most sold copies of Marx's 'Capital' - the Bible for Communists everywhere. So part of the reason Japan lurched to the right in the 1930s was the great fear of Communism as well as the Russian threat to the north. Which explains the Manchurian state as a project to create a buffer state.

Anyway. With the defeat of anti-communist, Fascist Japan in 1945, the USA had to become guarantor for Japan's security in exchange of Japan giving up arms 'forever' in its 'Peace Constitution' as written by MacArthur's GHQ. It was a very clever move by Shigeru Yoshida, because it produced three key results. Japan was able to be America's ally without providing arms or lives; Japan no longer had to confront Communism by itself in the Far East, that job fell to the USA; and Japan prospered economically as a result.

So the pay off of my big theory is this: the USA was fighting the Vietnam War on behalf of Japan.
That's it.
Had WWII not taken shape the way it did and Japan sided with the West, then Japan would have kept its military presence in South East Asia. It would have fallen to Japan to combat Communism in the wake of France pulling out of Indochina, not America. Instead, America got it self dragged into the slip-stream of the evacuating French, and ended up having to expand the war bit by bit - legitimacy be damned.

The logical extension to my theory is that the War in Afghanistan for the US is a war that it inherited from the Russians in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet State, just as it had inherited the Vietnam War from a vacated power in the Far East.

Still Fighting In Afghanistan

The natural question that begs to be answered is, "why are we still fighting in Afghanistan?"
Neither of these films actually come close to addressing the issue in any adequate way or form. It is clear that for both these films and film makers, Afghanistan is a phenomenon in the Husserl sense. It's out there and our cognition struggles to come to grips with it. It's just not manifestly real enough - instead it is understood through the distorted looking glass of the media. Afghanistan may as well be on Mars or in Narnia for most Americans.

'CWW' delivers on to the fact that the war in Afghanistan from the Afghan perspective is a religious war. It is Julia Roberts' Texan fundraiser character who believes in a crusade against the God-less Communists that lobbies Tom Hanks' rather sardonic, secular Charlie Wilson in supporting the Afghans against the Russians. It is also the Allah Akbar/God is Great chant that convinces Ned Beatty's Arms Committee chief to back Charlie Wilson.

Perhaps what gets lost in the shuffle is that the Afghans were willing to shake hands with the capitalist Christian 'Great Satan' in order to defeat the Godless Communists, and that alliance was never going to endure history. It's a little disconcerting that Charlie Wilson went to help these people and he reduced the help down to sending more weapons. The whole operation to Afghanistan has ballooned into the great black market for arms in Northern Pakistan, and continues to destabilise the region; but the film is incredibly *light* in discussing those issues.

In 'LFL', Afghanistan is like the surface of the meteor in 'Armageddon'. It is dark with blue light onto black edgy rocks, with deep snow. Two stranded soldiers US soldiers fight to the death with Taliban fighters we never get to see face to face. No glory-gore of Rambo IV here; just a prosaic tragedy. What's even sadder is that the best discourse the film has to offer as to why they are in Afghanistan is delivered by Tom Cruise, who says with the same Scientology-Stare to Meryl Streep "Do you want to win the War on Terror, yes or no?"
When Streep's character prevaricates, he thunders "It's a very simple question, Yes or No?"

It actually reminded me of the way he said "There'll be no more of this spectator-ism. You're either in the game or get out of the stadium!" in that horrible Scientology video that did the rounds. I think Tom Cruise's credibility as a human being took a huge hit with that interview.
Anyway, it's clear that 'LFL' is saying they don't really know why the USA is in Afghanistan, and that what it is trying to do there."

Let's face it, we live in a time when the First World is facing two ugly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as seeing the multitude of conflicts in Africa and elsewhere; and Tom Cruise's central metaphysical concern is building a five-panic-room house in Colorado for the day Xenu attacks Earth.
Err... right, Tom.

In any case, it's not entirely clear why the Americans are there but for repeated references to September 11. I don't think that is all there is to it, so I don't know why we choose to dumb ourselves down by thinking that is the case. By the same token, the film does a bit of disservice to itself there.

Cryptic Title

Just what does 'Lions For Lambs' Mean? you might ask.
It's a reference made in the film that explains it is how WWI Germans saw the English Army - that their soldiers were brave as Lions, but the Generals were like Lambs.
I'm not so sure the simile works at all. it's not that the USA command is meek. It's more like it's Blind to circumstance, Deaf to criticism and decidedly tactical when it probably needs to be thought more broadly strategic terms.
The film only delivers half the point. The big point it does deliver is that Tom Cruise really is an acting light weight when played against to Meryl Streep. He's simply awful in this film - a bit like a lamb sent out to face a lioness.

Hollywood Liberalism

The GOP always complains that Hollywood is pro-Democrat. This is from the party that boasts Clint Eastwood AND Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Still, you do kind of understand. Hanoi Jane and all that; the Hollywood mob seem incredibly keen to say no to war even though they keep making fiction filled with the stuff.

What's really galling about 'CWW' is how the film celebrates the Soviet defeat with innocent joy and yet totally fails to face up to the failure of managing Afghanistan after that moment. The film simply rolls up a quote from Wilson that says they "completely fucked up the End Game". It's a little disingenuous to leave it at that, given the size of the fiasco. And it's not something I'm willing to lay at just George W. Bush's feet, but also to his father George Herbert Walker Bush who did plenty for Gulf War I but failed to see the missed opportunities, as well as Bill Clinton who did mostly nothing of lasting importance.

The point is, it's a bit on the nose to say it was "their fault". It was collectively, all our faults we chose to look after our backyards instead of addressing real, serious problems that were emerging out there. The wide-eyed "Oh boy shucks" of 'CWW' is totally not what the doctor ordered.

'LFL' fares a little better in that it is willing to discuss the notion of winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, but it's spoken by Tom Cruise's character Jasper Irving, who thinks he's going o accomplish this through winning some battles. So in the end, nobody comes up with a concrete plan to do that; they simply disagree with more fighting. I can see why the GOP might object to Hollywood liberalism.

For my part, I'm not sure more fighting is the answer. If anything they need to come up with a strategy for demilitarising and disarming these people. And Armies can be handy for that. In any case, it's clear that the writers in Hollywood can barely get their heads around conceiving of the war in Afghanistan as an extension of "9/11"; what chance have they got of seeing the war as part of the great counter-colonial struggle in that part of the world? In neither film do the film making teams offer any concrete alternatives to the fiascoes going down in Afghanistan.

It's easy objecting to a war, and an unpopular war at that. It's another thing to conceive of how to extricate the First World from the mess that is Afghanistan. In that sense the Hawks are right to grumble about Hollywood for taking the easy shots without offering an alternative option. To date, it's been send in Iron Man, send in Rambo, send in a couple of young actors to play soldiers.

On Robert Redford

Before Tom Cruise was the pretty boy of Hollywood that could sell schlock with his smile, there was Robert Redford. Robert Redford the actor was such an All-American boy it seemed like he was caste from a mold. The blond, blue- eyed visage, the controlled, mellifluous voice, the bolt-upright posture, the glance, the smile, all added up to the definition of a Hollywood Movies Star.

Since then it's actually remarkable how few men have actually stepped into that mold. As it turned out, they really haven't been able to make another one of these guys. Perhaps America has moved on, and perhaps even the demographic has moved on. After all, how hyper-Aryan -looking could you get beyond Robert Redford?

An yet Redford has continually made films that are against the fascist impulses of America. My favorite performance by Redford is possibly his work in 'All The President's Men' where his understated delivery underlined the gritty realism of that picture. He never got histrionic with that role, while Dustin Hoffman was let loose on the Bernstein character like a hungry hound.

The most problematised role for me is actually his part in 'The Natural'. He was simply too old to have played that role of Roy Hobbs - he looks stiff and ungainly, and you never quite buy the time line of events as a result. In any case, I still like the film and it's not like he ruins it for me; but I do remember sitting alone in the dark watching the film thinking, "this is kinda wrong, no?"

I recall being at AFTRS, and they showed 'Out of Africa' as a case where a star can distort the script. The contention was that having cast Redford against Streep, they had to expand that role to accommodate his star stature, an that this resulted in a bad script. While I never liked the film all that much, I always thought it was a great move to have Redford in it. It was interesting to see he cast Streep to play the journalist. in 'LFL'. It certainly evoked a lot of memories. It even occurred to me that they sure haven't found more where he came from.
He means well, and he's shown spine, and that's a whole lot better than many who earn stardom in Tinseltown. The last Redford sequence in 'LFL' where he puts on the jacket and ushers out the kid almost seems like a goodbye note to the audience.

From The Headlines

26 Year Worst Drop

Ouch. That's all the gains for 2007 being wiped of in the first 3 weeks of Jan. Did I hear 'Bear Market'?
...And there's no end in sight!

Tom Cruise Is Likened To A Top Nazi

There's this bit here that's being reported:

Respected German historian Guido Knopp has compared a speech by US actor Tom Cruise to the Church of Scientology with a call to war by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

Knopp, an expert on World War II history, said in an interview with Bild newspaper: "Tom Cruise's manner calls to mind Goebbels."

The historian was commenting on a video recording of a rousing sermon Cruise delivered to fellow Scientology members four years ago that was recently posted on the internet.

The Mission Impossible star is seen asking fellow members of the church: "Should we clean this place up?"

Knopp said it was bound to remind Germans of Goebbels's notorious call for "total war" issued in Berlin on February 18, 1943.

"It is possible that the way in which Cruise speaks is common in many empowerment circles in the United States," he said.

"But the scene in which Cruise asks if the Scientologists should clean up the world and they all respond 'yes' will remind any German with an interest in history of Goebbels's infamous Sports Palace speech."

Cruise's portrayal of Nazi resistance hero Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, an aristocrat who led a failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944, has caused unhappiness in Germany because of the actor's links to Scientology.

It's a convoluted world we live in. The cut on Tom's NAZI uniform looks much better than the real thing worn by Goebbels.

Tom Cruise: Weirdo, Cultist, Scientologist

They're A Weird Mob


Don't expect that video to be up for long. Youtube is pulling it down every few hours.This link came in the e-mail today and it's worth a look. It's Tom Cruise talking in an indoctrination video for the Church of Scientology.

You have to watch this video. It shows Tom Cruise, with all the wide-eyed fervor that he brings to the promotion of a movie, making the argument for Scientology, the bizarre 20th-century religion. Making the argument is an understatement. The Hollywood actor, star of movies such as Mission Impossible, is a complete fanatic. "When you're a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one who can really help... We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures." There's much much more. Let me put it this way: if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10.

My thoughts? Man, he is one weird bastard.
"Love, compassion and toughness to get it done. "
What, exactly on earth, is he talking about?
In the video, he keeps saying he's dedicating his life to making the world a better place, but c'mon Tom, you're an *ACTOR* for crying out loud! Not Mother Teresa or the head of the Red Cross emergency services. If you want to help, donate all your money to a real cause instead of huckster cults.

There's even more Tom Cruise talk in the press today.

Pan Macmillan will not print a local edition of the book Tom Cruise, An Unauthorised Biography in Australia due to legal concerns, a move that has been labelled an act of censorship.

But the book, which alleges that Scientology played a major role in the breakdown of the marriage between Hollywood superstar Cruise and Nicole Kidman, will still be imported for sale at independent bookshops.

Scientologists have denied claims by the book's author, Andrew Morton, that Kidman was threatened with blackmail if she spoke out against the controversial religion.

The Cruise book, which is expected to be a best-seller overseas, will be released in a blitz of marketing and publicity in the US overnight.

The Church of Scientology and Cruise's lawyer have said the book is inaccurate.

It's interesting the Scientologists are so big they can intimidate a publishing house int silence. I mean, if there's nothing to hide, they shouldn't be trying to shut people up. They should just mount their counter-argument in public. This sort of intimidation goes to the heart of why they are so reviled.

Lauren Bacall Slams Tom Cruise

Sanity Prevails

At least on some level on this plane of existence.
Lauren Bacall served up a doozy to Tom Cruise and his recent antics .
Heck, why not quote it wholus bolus:

Screen legend Lauren Bacall has taken a caustic swipe at Tom Cruise, chiding the Hollywood star for his "vulgar" behaviour and questioning his acting ability.

In an interview in the latest issue of Time magazine, Bacall, 81, who has never been shy in voicing her opinion of fellow actors, made clear her distaste for Cruise's recent displays of emotion over his engagement to actress Katie Holmes.

"His whole behaviour is so shocking," she said.

"It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it's kind of a sickness," she added.

Cruise's red-carpet kisses with Holmes and a series of exuberant and very public expressions of love for his fiancee, led to criticism that the once very private star was seeking cheap publicity for his blockbuster movie, War of the Worlds, which was released in June.

On one occasion, Cruise excitedly jumped up and down on talk show host Oprah Winfrey's couch as he revealed his adoration for Holmes, who was starring in her own summer blockbuster, Batman Begins.

Bacall also had some less than complimentary words for Cruise's acting skills as she bemoaned the liberal way labels such as "great" and "legend" were sprinkled over Hollywood stars.

"I mean the word 'great' stands for something," Bacall said. "When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise."



The screen siren and widow of Humphrey Bogart had made similar remarks last year about Cruise's former wife, Nicole Kidman, with whom she worked on the film, Birth.

At the time, Bacall took exception to one reporter's description of Oscar-winner Kidman as a legend.

"She's not a legend," Bacall snapped. "She's a beginner. What is this 'legend'? She can't be a legend at whatever age she is. You have to be older."

Yes. 'Great' does mean something, and indeed it applies to the great dame Bacall.
I saw her perform live in Sydney, performing in 'Sweet Bird of Youth' with Colin Friels, sometime in 1986... Whoah! Time flies.
My secret wish is that one day, when 'Key Psycho' premiers in LA, we get to invite Lauren Bacall. Must. Finish. Film... :)