After witnessing the debacle at Soldier Field I quickly needed some mindless relief from the beating I had just seen. The latest installment in the “Mission Impossible” series was playing, and all I kept thinking was the title referred to the Bears playoff hopes. Actually as improbable as the movie was, it certainly was more believable then anyone thinking the Bears are still alive.
Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hawk, and this time he does a James Bond trick and saves the world. I could begin to describe the plot but it was more ridiculous then Mike Martz’s playbook. Suffice to say that Cruise and his sidekicks dodge death more then the Bears offense avoids getting into the end zone.
Jeremy Renner is introduced into the cast and the word is that he will take over for Cruise (getting a bit long in the tooth) if there is a fifth installment. In this flick, Cruise supposedly climbs up a 130 story building, jumps thru windows, crashes cars at high speeds and tries to outrun a sand storm. I wonder how many stunt doubles were employed for this movie.
The IMF (Impossible Mission Force) also has a new female member and what a member she is. Paula Patton defines sultry, sexy and shapely. Her acting is a little wooden, but who cares. This isn’t Macbeth and she surely isn’t some Victorian old hag.
The movie studio and production company did something fairly unique (and maybe risky) in releasing this flick in only IMAX theaters for the first five days. The gamble being that large crowds would want to see this action movie on the large screen with the sound blaring from the extra speakers. I can’t say that I would have enjoyed it any more or less on the smaller screen and I doubt it’s worth spending the extra $5.00 to seeing it the IMAX way.
This movie will definitely pack them in for a while because of the publicity, and the fact that this is one of the worst Decembers I can remember for cinematic releases. It’s definitely too long ( well over 2 hours,) and hard to keep up with the plot, but it’s definitely mindless and that’s what I needed after seeing the Bears (again) wet the bed.
My rating… a run scoring double – two and a half stars.
