'Review': New Indiana Jones and new Mission Impossible.
This week I went to the two biggest blockbusters of the summer - the eleventh Indiana Jones film and the forty seventh Mission Impossible. Both films feature men fighting on top of moving trains.
My week started with an unexpected day off on Monday, meaning I could have a guilt-free trip to the cinema. I checked the film times and determined that Mission Impossible was my best option. There was a time when my choice would have been a Hungarian epic or at the very least the latest Wes Anderson but time has taken its toll on my interest in bettering myself. Give me fights atop trains please.
I hit my first obstacle when it became apparent that I had arrived for the parent and baby screening of Mission Impossible. There was one mother and one new born baby. “Oh, I don’t mind.” I said but was refused entry. It’s a shame to belong to a gender with such a poor history of behaviour that there’s considered to be a danger that I might, at some stage, put down my chocolate covered raisins and attack a baby.
I opted for Indiana Jones and the Container of Justice - I can’t be bothered to look up what it’s actually called. My review goes as follows; it was fine. Movies, before they’re even released - sometimes before they’ve even been made - seem to be declared either incredible or dog shit. How many hundreds of thousands of opinions on Barbie and Oppenheimer - two movies that virtually no-one has yet seen - have already been written? It is my contention that 95% of movies are some variation on ‘fine’. I would put Indiana Jones and the Poultry of Power into that category - ‘fine’.
It is perhaps worth noting that I had two naps whilst it was on. That’s my excuse for not entirely following the plot. The film features a digitally enhanced, younger Harrison Ford who seems to lack the twinkle and personality of the actual Harrison Ford. The bulk of the film features actual Harrison Ford, now eighty-one, grumping his way through a series of stock Indiana Jones adventures, some of which I slept through.
I’ve always loved Harrison Ford. His appeal comes from his world class good looks coupled with a knowing smirk that says - “I think this is all bullshit, by the way”. Tom Cruise doesn’t think it’s all bullshit. Tom Cruise wants us to know that it is all - the magic of movies, that is - the single most important thing in the world. His smirk knows very little.
The new Indiana Jones is perhaps most notable for the starring role given to Fleabag. Thanks to the fact that Phoebe Waller-Bridge gives the exact same performance as she does in her sitcom, it is impossible not to keep expecting her to look directly into the camera and say something like ‘anal sex? don’t mind if I do.’. Now, I liked Fleabag and I like Waller-Bridge but it does feel a little bit like popping Delboy into Goodfellas. Would Ford still be making Indiana Jones films forty years on if Raiders of the Lost Ark had included Blakey from On The Buses?
Yesterday, came another welcome day off and another opportunity to attempt my own personal Mission Impossible and see my originally intended film choice. This showing turned out to cater for the opposite end of life. The ‘silver screening’ gave discount tickets to the over 60s, something Tom Cruise is now eligible for. How long are we planning on continuing with this? Demanding that if elderly men want to keep starring in films then they have to fight on top of moving trains? Tom Cruise is now significantly older than Jack Nicholson was when they played opposite each other in A Few Good Men. Shouldn’t Tom be playing those roles now? The suspicion is that he has no interest in doing so, choosing instead to pretend that death doesn’t exist and spend half his life doing his own stunts and the other half telling us that he does his own stunts.
In the battle of the two films, Mission Impossible and the Taser of Truth (again, can’t be bothered to remember) was the clear winner because despite being half an hour longer, I only had one nap. Instead of Fleabag, Tom opts to surround himself with not one but three British women (with a combined age matching his own) and a male British sit com star in Simon Pegg. There are also appearances from British sketch show star Mark Gatiss and star of British sitcom Rob Delaney. Hollywood movies are turning into Noel’s House Party.
The film, as far as I could tell, was about A.I becoming so powerful that the resulting ‘entity’ is capable of destroying the world. Or something. But battling a vague ‘entity’ is hard to envision so, to give Tom something tangible to chase, the entity is operated, hilariously, by a key. I think. Like I say, I did have a nap. This Mission Impossible is part one of two but with both the actors and the writers now on strike, the studio may have to find that key and ask the entity to make the second instalment.
I enjoyed my two afternoons at the cinema. Two largely silly films, watched by a largely silly man. If nothing else they gave me the confidence that by having a career mainly comprised of British sitcoms and sketch shows, I’m on the path the Hollywood.