Please remain seated with your safety belt on until the vehicle has come to a complete stop.

The Running Spy.

Running. If you like running, you’ll love MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III. Because that’s all that Tom Cruise seems to be doing in it.

Besides running, Cruise is also being IMF espionage agent Ethan Hunt. (When he tells someone that IMF stands for “Impossible Missions Force,” we realize how ridiculous it sounds, and why everybody’s trying to kill him). In this outing, IMF [snigger] is trying to recover a device called the Rabbit’s Foot (ha! It might as well be called the McGuffin’s Foot) from arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman, oozing sinister callousness).

Ethan uses a Davian mask to infiltrate and kidnap Davian. I’m still amazed at those lifelike rubber masks that the M:I team utilize – y’see, when Ethan puts on a Davian mask, he somehow gains the extra pudding bear pounds as well. And all he needs to do to lose the weight is to take off the mask!

Since we left him in Australia with Thandie Newton’s poonanny in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 (2002), Ethan has retired and is playing patticake with Michelle Monaghan‘s poonanny (his nurse wife Julia), who doesn’t know he’s a secret agent and – like every woman in movies unknowingly married to secret agents – blindly falls for his stories of working late at the office or going away for two days to a sales convention.

Agent Musgrave (Billy Crudup) snaps Ethan out of his ‘burb daze by sending him on a rescue mission for an agent he trained (Keri Russell). Russell is blistering hot as she and Ethan shoot their way out of the clutches of Davian’s thugs who can’t aim (with a small appearance by Eddie Marsan as a henchman). Then a disturbing conclusion to this failed rescue – as a brain-addling device implanted in Russell’s head is detonated and her eyes suddenly skew in different directions. It’s a great death scene for its gruesome impact.

They show us the consequences of this explosive implant so that when it ends up in Ethan’s head in the finale, we know the devastating results he’s trying to avoid.

You had me at hot chicks with guns.
(And Keri Russell is pretty hot too.)

Ethan’s team consists of wisecracking Luther (Ving Rhames, in his third outing as Tom’s bottom bitch), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who doesn’t seem necessary in this generic B-role), Zhen Lei (Maggie Q, who only gets to show off her urgent spinner bod once, in a salubrious dress with peekaboo thigh), and a new helper bear, Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, cubicle nerd, team-adjacent). Watch for Aaron Paul as Julia’s brother, just a couple of years before BREAKING BAD would make him a household meth name. Laurence Fishburne is IMF director Brassel, the cliché boss whose nerves Ethan keeps getting on.

Davian (Hoffman) kidnapping Ethan’s wife Julia makes the mission personal, as he bargains to release her in return for the McGuffin’s Foot. More stunts, more Pretty Orange Explosions, more running.

This slick J.J. Abrams-directed actioner delivers on its extravagant promises, with European locations (as well as California, the Vatican, Germany, China), startling action, impossible stunts (the “swinging-between-two-skyscrapers” gag, the “drone-attack-on-the-bridge” gag), Pretty Orange Explosions, the cliché of chasing a rolling thing through traffic, that now-famous cable gag with Cruise descending spread-eagled and stopping just short of the ground, plot turns that surprise us, and Lalo Schifrin’s magnificent theme (extrapolated by Michael Giacchino) bashing us in the temples passim.

And lots of running.

END

Another Fine Meth You’ve Gotten Us Into, Yo!

BREAKING BAD is about a man who finds his balls.

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a middle class suburban chemistry teacher with a wife and crippled son, who discovers he has cancer, and stumbles into a situation that allows him to create inordinate wealth to provide for his family before he dies – by cooking illegal methamphetamine. Seems reasonable. Crime, after all, does pay. To whit: Dick Cheney.

A chance meeting with a former junkie student, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), prompts Walt to propose a “business deal,” where Jesse, with his street smarts, would push, and Walt, with his chemistry skills, would cook. In the back of a beaten up Winnebago, they set up shop, with Walt creating a product so pure (“This is art, Mr. White!”) that the market is howling/cringing for it. And though the theory of cooking, selling and getting out clean is sound, the reality of dealing with dealers and junkies is very, very not…

Anna Gunn is Skyler, Walt’s sturdy (soon to be long-suffering) wife. R.J. Mitte is Walt’s debilitated son, Walter Jr., with slurred speech and crutches, yet an unapologetic, cool teen presence (affected by real life neural problems, R.J. plays this role as more affected than he really is).

And Skyler’s harridan sister Marie (a forcefully unlikeable Betsy Brandt) is married to Hank (Dean Norris), a brawny braggy blowhard – and DEA agent (Drug Enforcement Administration). Which means Walt’s brother-in-law is a narcotics officer! Hank, without even realizing it, will continually dog Walt’s heels, and half the fun in this first Season is Walt hiding in plain sight under Hank’s nose.

And the sparkplug that makes the engine fire – Aaron Paul as Jesse. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this how they tell us the devil comes at you? Not like a twisted hag, but like a dreamboat. Aquiline-nosed, three-day-growthed, bright-eyed and blonded, sexy-stupid Jesse perfectly typifies the devil dynamic in a later Season, when he cajoles a young female gas station attendant into accepting meth as payment for fuel, his puppydog eyes gleaming with sensual promise while a shaft of sunlight electrifies his golden shock of moussed locks. She doesn’t stand a chance.

Walt and Jessie work together, yet never agree on anything! That’s how remarkably these characters are written. At each other’s throats one minute and the next, cooperating partners in crime. From Walt’s very first suggestion to partner up, down through the Seasons, as their lives take them through amazing turnarounds, they somehow always end up on opposite sides of the argument. Jessie rebukes Walt’s first attempts to partner up, but by Episode 4 (Cancer Man) Jesse is asking Walt to partner up – and now Walt tells Jesse to get the hell off his property! By Episode 6 (Crazy Handful of Nothin’) Walt wants to partner again and Jesse’s reaction: “Whatever, man.” One tolerates the other for the street cred the partnership needs; one despises the other for their teacher-student history and intruding upon his world. The underlying motivations would shift as the Seasons flow (at times, Jesse would represent Walt’s surrogate son or become Walt’s conscience; at times, Walt would be the man with the plan or Jessie’s greatest bane), but that dynamic of combative comradeship would remain in some form, amazingly to the very last frames of Season Five. Yet it is touching how, no matter what adversity they go through, Jesse always refers to Walt as “Mr. White.” Touching and funny. Only once, in a moment of anger, does Jesse snidely call him, “Walter.”

Poffy. He is the one who knocks.

Comparisons with THE SOPRANOS are inevitable. Both are tales of singular men (heroes yet anti-heroes all in one) who do despicable things, in the name of their families. Both men own their actions, and are unrepentant. Both men feel trapped or tricked by fate into their complicated situations, but ultimately, it was their choice to travel their paths. Oh yeah, and there’s all that murder and stuff.

As with Tony Soprano’s wife Carmela, Walt’s wife Skyler ends up rationalizing her husband’s actions to preserve her own sanity (as with all wealth, you can only live with yourself if you close your mind off to how the wealth was arrived at). As Tony had a fuckup nephew whom he would grant a pass more times than should be allowed, Walt has his Christopher Moltisanti – Jesse. Walt’s teaching sessions are the equivalent of Tony’s psych sessions; the analogies between the science and the story are a canny dynamic that will be lost in the later Seasons (as Tony’s psych sessions lost their prominence). Of course, these characters are merely elements that any exciting story should possess; they’re as obvious as the need for a villain to pursue the hero, but they are woven into this tale in an original, entertaining manner.

Created by Vince Gilligan, the writing is edge-of-the-seat compelling; characters leap fully-formed at our throats, each actor committed completely to their electrifying roles; each urgent episode a juggernaut of forward momentum, like a Stephen King book where you can’t stop turning the pages – BREAKING BAD is THE reason binge-watching was invented. Cranston so in-the-moment that Sir Anthony Hopkins lauds him as “The greatest actor in the world”!

In this first Season, Walt’s chemistry background is a running dynamic; he uses his “powers” (so to speak) more often and ingeniously than in later Seasons. We hear a lot of explanatory “science” dialogue to Jessie, and Walt’s knowledge is always helping them out of fixes. There is that explosive moment when Krazy-8 (Max Arciniega) forces Walt to cook (Episode 1, Pilot) and Walt throws red phosphorus on the stove to cause a smokescreen that poisons Krazy-8. And in Episode 2 (The Cat’s in the Bag) Walt actually tells us how to leave no evidence in a murder by dissolving the human victim with hydrofluoric acid – in a plastic not metal container! And the absolute coolest “superhero” moment: Walt confronts Tuco (Raymond Cruz) (Episode 6, Crazy Handful of Nothin’) and pulls out a crystal of fulminated mercury, “This – is not meth!” and hurls it to the ground, blowing out the whole floor of the building. It was boss. It was tight. It was—

“Yeah, Science!”

Now back to that guy who finds his balls. Mid-life crisis? Or meth-life crisis? At the start of the Pilot, Walt is celebrating his 50th birthday, and Skyler’s idea of a present is giving him a handie while she shops online and tells him to paint the bedroom. By the end of the first episode – after the street has claimed him – he is taking her roughly from behind…

Bitch!

1.1. Pilot.
A wham-bam cold open slam, as Walter White in a gas-mask, pantless, skids an RV aground into a ditch and exits, discombobulated, pointing a gun at approaching sirens offscreen…

Chemistry teacher Walter White is diagnosed with cancer. We meet his just-pregnant wife Skyler, crippled son Walter Jr., his ugly-on-the-outside-and-inside sister-in-law Marie, and DEA brother-in-law Hank. On a drive-along with Hank, Walt discovers one of his former students, Jesse, in a meth house. To provide for his family with quick cash before his death, Walt hatches a plan to cook meth until the cancer claims him. A drug hood named Krazy-8 puts a dent in that perfect plan.

1.2. The Cat’s in the Bag.
Walt and Jessie must dispose of the bodies of the drug deal gone wrong. Jessie dissolves Emilio with disastrous results in his bathtub. And Walt keeps putting off his end of the job – killing Krazy-8, imprisoned in Jessie’s basement with a bicycle lock.

1.3. And the Bag’s in the River.
Jessie’s and Walt’s mopping up of Emilio’s dissolved blood, jawbones and flesh is juxtaposed with a scene of young Walt with a dark-haired spinner adding up the chemical elements of the human body: hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, iron, calcium… In the present, as Walt is pouring the remains of the hydrofluorically dissolved dealer into a bucket, we hear his younger voice: “There’s got to be more to a human being than that.” It’s terrifying and humorous, wrapped in futile. That’s all we are. Mush. And that’s all we can ever make of our lives. Mush. (We would realize later that this young lady is not Skyler, but Gretchen (Jessica Hecht), whom we would meet as someone else’s wife in Episode 5, Gray Matter.)

A funny aside with Hank and Walter Jr., as Hank tries to scare Walter off the marijuana he thinks he’s using. Humorous also because of Hank’s sincere insistence that pot is a gateway drug to meth. While Walter Jr. is oblivious to the whole lesson.

A growth episode for Walt as a character – whether the growth is good or bad is entirely up to your perception – as he realizes that no matter how much of a connection he thought he made with Krazy-8, it was illusion. People are just inherently… bad. And the results of that realization are a shocking, brutal piece of television.

1.4. Cancer Man.
Jesse goes home to his parents, in desperation. Where they debate on whether to let him stay or not. We meet Jesse’s younger brother Jake, a studious golden-haired teacher’s pet, who, unlike the ne’er-do-well Jesse, will one day make his parents very proud. And then shoot up a library or something for being so repressed.

1.5. Gray Matter.
His cancer now public with family and friends, Walt “chooses” to die, so as not to be a burden. While everyone “talks about him like he has no say in the matter.” A brave episode to voice these ideas. In moments of disaster, people around you are always importuning you to live live live. Why? What’s in it for them?

Walt: “What I want – what I need – is a choice… My entire life, it seems, I never had a real say about any of it… This last one – cancer – all I have left is how I choose to approach this.”

Marie moves into likeability with her empathy of Walt’s deathwish. And Walt’s powerful summation of the lack of quality of life is refreshing: “These doctors talking about surviving – one year, two years – like it’s the only thing that matters. But what good is it if I’m too sick to work, to enjoy a meal, to make love?” I concur. Especially with that last bit. When I can’t do that anymore, somebody please kill me. Walt doesn’t want to mark time choking down pills, and to be remembered as artificially alive. “I choose – not to do it.”

If we thought Jesse was a fuckup – here comes big dumb galoot junkie friend Badger (Matt Jones, who would also drag Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) into the mix). Jesse cooks up a batch with Badger in the desert. Irresponsible, erratic, untrustworthy and stupid. That’s the first five minutes. It’s downhill from there. Note the excellent editing in the cookup sequence; reminiscent of the shootup sequences in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM.

A regret from Walt’s past is revealed: his old friend Elliott Schwartz (Adam Godley), who not only made millions on Walt’s scientific ideas, but also claimed the woman Walt once loved, Gretchen (Jessica Hecht).

1.6. Crazy Handful of Nothin’.
One of the best cold opens in the series, where we see Walter coming back onboard the meth trip, laying down the law to Jesse; juxtaposed with a scene of him walking away from a demolished building, shaved head, clutching a bag which could very well be holding a head, as the splotch of blood seeping through it indicates. Main Title Card.

Trying to sell in bulk, Jesse makes contact with the most unbalanced thug in the series so far – Tuco.

This is the episode where Walter White takes on the countenance of the character that would seep into public consciousness. He shaves his head. Still green, yet grabbing a nut, he infiltrates Tuco’s lair and pulls the explosive gag.

1.7. A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal.
Walt comes into his own on the street. The fish-out-of-water is slowly being replaced by the scientist-on-the-street. As with all of Season One, science and intelligence employed on the street is the unique hook of the series. Book-smarts clashing with street-smarts.

Walt and Jesse sell Walt’s new sky-blue meth to Tuco and realize just how unbalanced he is, as he bashes to death his henchman for daring to open his mouth during the drug deal. The stage is set. The sociopath is on his road to balls and glory. BREAKING BAD breaks good.

END

Ingmar Bergman is spinning in the last grave on the left…

What pisses me off about THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is that nowhere do the filmmakers mention – not in advertising, not in screen credits and not even in the Special Features on the DVD – that this movie is ripped straight from Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING (1951, aka JUNGFRUKÄLLAN).

Instead, director Dennis Iliadis decides to give screen credit to Wes Craven, who created the “original” LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT in 1972: “Based on the story written and directed by Wes Craven.” No, it’s not. The story of villains who molest a young girl and then seek refuge unknowingly in the house of that girl’s parents was written by Ulla Isaksson. Craven rewrote the story to pander to American bloodthirstiness.

Bland Tony Goldwyn and blander Monica Potter are the parents. Sara Paxton is the virgin teen – so slim, smooth, innocent and sexy, only one thought crosses our minds: she just has to die. Martha MacIsaac (cutie Becca from SUPERBAD) is the pot-smoking teen friend.

Garret Dillahunt (looking like the sperm-child of Jason Patric, Rob Lowe and Dennis Miller) is the villain; his vaguely lesbian-goth chick, Riki Lindhome (who knows how to please viewing audiences by getting her cans out constantly); his teen son, Spencer Treat Clark (GLADIATOR, 2000), who is sickened by his father’s crimes and beaten for being so “unmanly.” Aaron Paul is Garret’s partner in crime.

Whereas Bergman’s film focused on the STORY, Iliadis’s film – like Craven’s before it – focuses on the GORY. Here, the parents of the molested child turn into the monsters they despise. In Bergman’s film, the father (Max von Sydow) dispatches the villains quickly and efficiently, like a god come to life, exacting justice; in Iliadis’s film, there’s mangling and bashing and stabbing and a claw hammer to the skull and microwaving someone’s head gratuitously – in effect, the parents become the “slashers,” an ironic twist on the teen-slaying genre.

In Bergman’s film, the father also kills the young kid in the gang of villains, who did not participate in the crime, but was an abettor for doing nothing to stop it. That was powerful stuff. With the gutless MPAA breathing down America’s neck, it is absolutely no surprise that young Spencer Treat Clark is spared here.

There seems to be no storyline in this movie, outside of Isaksson’s blatantly plagiarized premise. Isaksson’s story is altered by having the raped daughter somehow crawl back home, rather than her friend. And then a tenuous allusion to THE VIRGIN SPRING when the family realizes the quickest way to rush her to hospital is upriver by boat. But they can’t find the boat keys!

The script might have been just ten pages long with the amount of padding onscreen – the rape scene itself goes on and on for so long, it’s as if the director and editor just sat there touching themselves and letting it run. It’s not even tragic after a certain point – it’s just hot.

Further evidence that these filmmakers are just trying to gross us out: the father is a doctor; while he is putting stitches in a man’s nose, they have a blackout. The father takes a giant flashlight and – instead of shining it on the guy’s nose to finish his needle stroke – goes outside to fix the circuit breakers first, leaving the needle sticking half-through the nose. Some kind of doctor!

There is no characterization, no character arcs – the only throughline seems to be “trying to find the boat keys.”

This story opened deep, dark questions about the human condition: how far will you go to defend your loved ones?; how sweet can revenge be if you have to stoop to the level of the villains?; can you go through with taking a human life at all? And where the hell are those boat keys?! There is one scene where the father and mother exchange a glance that is laden with these unspoken conundrums, while they kill one of the villains… by mangling his hand in the sink and sticking a claw hammer in his head. Guess they figured the answers.

Then those questions get replaced by bigger ones, like “Where can I get psychiatric help?” as the father seems to slip into the Teen Slasher Movie world himself when we see him cutting open the ringleader’s back to sever his spinal column in order to paralyze him from the neck down, and then – while the ringleader is conscious – stick his head in a microwave and set it on high. Now that’s just plain wrong! Everyone knows the setting for human head is two minutes on ‘medium.’

It is a complicated, time-consuming procedure and we cannot quite tell chronologically when the father performs his insane little operation, but consider: if he did it BEFORE he rushed his raped daughter to the hospital, he is crazy; if he did it AFTER coming back from the hospital, he’s still crazy!

And the moral of the story is: Remember Where You Put The Boat Keys.

END