Slashdot Mirror
Movie Reviews:Mission Impossible 2
The last one was kinda James Bond for Dummies and this one sorta follows suit. The plot is pretty cheesy: evil biotech corporation creates killer bio disease and a cure... controlling the virus makes the cure valuable... its more complicated then that, but if you can't figure it out before the movie tediously explains it (complete with ridiculous comments about stock options that are so stupid that they make MI 1's scene about the new artificially intelligent risc chips seem like grad school level CS) then you probably should just wait for the next Pokemon movie or something 'cuz this ain't rocket science (hell, it isn't biotech either ;) There's an evil corporation complete with an evil CEO, an evil terrorist group complete with a lunatic leader and a suffering sidekick or 2.
Anyway the "Plot" is really just an excuse to show us lots of explosions, car/motercycle/helecoptor chases etc etc, along with gratuitous cleavage shots from the hot co-star (which is worth the price of admission assuming you go to a matinee), and Tom Cruise performing stupid backflip karate kicks that might work if they were in Cowboy BeBop, but don't even come close when actual human actors pretend to perform them in slow motion.
So its the roller coaster hollywood film and if you like the genre, you'll probably enjoy this one. It starts off fast and furious, but by the end I was yawning... like so many movies these days, it blows its wad in the first half hour: it just can't sustain the heat for the full 2 hours to keep you interested.
If you like your action fast and your plots brainless, you'll like this movie. If you just want to go for a good ride, you'll enjoy it. But if you gotta choose between Gladiator and MI2, grab your battle axe.
One of my friend dragged me to the premier of this Movie. I had high hopes for it specially when I saw John Woo's name in the credits. But sadly I'd have to say that the action was slightly offbase, MI-2 seem lack the heart pounding Bang-bang that I expected out of Woo. There does seem to be a higher concentration of action at the end of the movie but this does not go well with the melodrama in the rest of the movie. Yes it's a great movie to take a girl to (since I can see several reasons as to why a girl would like this love story over the rest of this summer attractions (even over dino)). The plot in this movie seem to be weak, a virus (ok close your ears if you have not seen it) that could kill all of mankind has been made at a biotech firm (they also made an antidote). The bad guys want the virus or the antidote (cause if they spread the virus and then sold the antidote they'd make tons of $$'s) and the good guys try to stop the bad guys. This movie has a similar tone as some of the later James Bond offerings (specially the one where they send a nuclear submarine off the cost of Turkey -- suposdely to vanquish the 'i kiss you' virii). Overall I give it a low 3 out of 10 and point people to other great summer attractions (Gladiator) and hope the rest of the Summer action movies has more action than B-rated love lines. I have high hopes for X-men and Titan AE
--
And Sturgeon's Law is:
"90% Of Everything Is Crap".
With a bonus 9% if it's a Hollywood movie.
But then I'm an old fart who still thinks the greatest think George Lucas has ever done is THX-1138.
--
Peter
If I could hear his thoughts, they'd be saying: "I'm eeeeeeevil. And I like it."
There were SO many lines in the movie that I (and others in the theater) just couldn't keep ourselves from laughing at! And, of course, the burning doorway-smoke-dove-Hawke-slo-mo John-Woo-wants-you-to-know-this-is-HIS-film-dammit shot.
Gladiator was better, if implausible in its own way. At least it had thought and political import. Replace "Rome" with "The U.S." and you had something to think about.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
It was true to its roots: it had an actual team of people doing all sorts of cool secret agenty stuff the whole time.
You obviously didn't see the same movie I saw. In the first Mission Impossible I saw, the team was killed in the first fifteen minutes. Seeing Emilio Estevez get killed was cool mind you. The rest of the movie was the Ethan Hunt show. It was not about teamwork, it was about Tom Cruise.
MI2 tries too hard to be James Bond. Too much leg, too little plot. I'm currently blaming the movies big faults on John Woo's lack of english skills, the dialogue just does not work on a grand scale. I felt that the team worked much better than in the first one though. The action was cool just not sustainable.
BTW it was Versacchi not Armani.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I remember Mission Impossible the TV show.
I don't remember explosions, chase scenes, or fights.
In fact, it seems that the whole point of the Mission Impossible as seen on TV was doing dangerous things and exicting missions Without using force but instead employing brains, reason, deception and cleverness.
I like the TV show.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
The thing you have to keep in mind about this movie is that it is an action flick. Even more then that it is a John Woo action flick. The plot is not going to be impecible, and the action scenes are going to show his style.
You have to keep in mind that the target audience for a movie like this is not 18-35 geek crowd, its the 13-24 testosterone crowd. They don't care if the plot has a few holes in it, so long as 1)The explosions are cool. 2)The fight scenes are cool. 3)They get to see something to titilate them.
Take a look at the Bond films, they follow a very similar formula, and have been wildly succesful. They say imitation is the sincerist form of flatery and I think that it shows true for the Mission Impossible movies.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
Not to be picky, but I thought that influenza was a retro-virus - that means it has RNA, not DNA as is continuously mentioned in the movie. Anyways, it sucked. I should have seen Gladiator again.
That's because Anthony Hopkins freaking rules. Only two other people could have delivered that line that well: Sean Connery and James Earl Jones.
Well in Sneakers the big bad Mafia guy is using Excel 4 on Windows 3.1 to balance the books. I just finished watching the Anime series Lain (Highly excellant, IMHO) and some of the screenshots look like NeXT boxen but the main Navi OS is called "Copeland". Of course there was the 3D file browser from Irix that was shown in Jurassic Park (Yes that actually shipped with old versions of Irix). That's all I can think of right now.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Yeah, sure. Whatever.
I stopped going to movies a *long* time ago because I would be "in" the movie when the an actor said a particularly dumb line and *bam* I'm sitting in a dark room surrounded by a bunch of slackjawed droolers. That's why I ROTFL'ing during Keanu's "wake-up" sequence in _Matrix_ -- I've been there!
If the "error" is critical to the plot I'm able to live with it. (E.g., who monitored & unplugged the traitor in _Matrix_? Obviously the meeting occured while he was sitting in the chair & Neo approached, but if he could interact like that then why did anyone need to get plugged in?)
But a lot of these errors are totally pointless oversights. E.g., the Star Trek: Borg movie (which may be the last movie I saw in a theater) had people casually walk around as an ICBM launched a few feet away. I've been a few *miles* away from a Shuttle launch, and seen plenty of footage of actual silo launches. People will *not* casually notice a launch a few hundred feet away... and that 2-second sequence left me sitting in a dark room. How hard would it be for them to put the launch silo a few hundred yards out of town? Did this missile base have a *single* silo?!
Maybe I'm being "unreasonable," but I don't have the same problem suspending disbelief when watching older movies. To be fair, that might be a "selection effect" where only the best 5% of movies from the 30's through 60's are aired, vs. *all* contemporary movies. Somehow I doubt _Battlefield Earth_ will be aired on the classic movies channel in 2035.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I think the virus was supposed to become infectous/airborne after the 20 hour incubation period. I don't know why the bad guys dropped the girl off and then just left her alone for however much time she had left (they never did tell you after the first 20 hour window, although Cruise apparently did have a watch on that he checked at the end of the film) and assumed that she wouldn't incinerate herself or something.
I read the internet for the articles.
At which time a new team consisting of Hunt, Luther, Franz, & the chick (forgot her name) was assembled. And they did things. Together.
There was none of that in MI2. I guess Ving Rhames had a minor part, but like I said...
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
[Warning: Tedious historical trivia ahead.]
> I would tend to agree that his debating techniques need a little refining, but so far nobody has decided to call him on any of his facts.
Best they didn't. I don't have the resources on hand to check the details of every claim he made, but he is by and large correct. For instance, I have a copy of Art and Myth in Ancient Greece, and by thumbing through it it took me about a minute to find five depictions of recurved bows on ancient Greek pottery. No, not Roman, but it does show that the type was known in the Mediterranean basin at least 500 years before the period in which the movie is set. Longbows? I just found a Web site (O Dubious Authority) claiming that archaeologists have found a cache of 36 Roman bows ranging 5'7" - 6'0" in length. Ballistae? Even advanced torsion types were invented in the Hellenistic era. Spears? My wargamers' guides show that Legionaires were progressively rearmed away from the pilum starting right about the time under consideration - Praetorians retaining the traditional weaponry longest - though I can't find a good description of what the new spear looked like. However, one of the new legionary types were called Lanciarii, the lancea being a long thin spear, or "lance", so draw your own conclusions.
Re stirrup, I'm not so sure. I think thong stirrups are quite ancient, with the iron stirrup being the late invention. At any rate, lancers were known to the Parthians, Sarmatians, and Romans (Catafractarii), with the Romans even experimenting slightly later with lancers mounted on horses pulling scythed chariots! As far as "effective cavalry" goes, an army of lancers and horse archers destroyed an army of good legionaires under one of Caesar's cronies as early as 53 BCE, long before the Roman army started its decline.
> Maybe it was just a response to what he felt was a 'know it all' attitude in the original post.
Yeah, that kind of rubbed me the wrong way too.
However, I do have to agree witht the original poster that Shanghai Noon is well worth the toll.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sadly I've never liked Woo's "lets make that kick just a little cooler/wilder than the last one" style. Nor his "every action sequence must involve explosions or slow-mo no matter what it is".
But that's just me :)
I'll take your word that those are perfectly valid fighting moves, but my biggest beef was with the bad guy. Whenever Tom Cruise started one of these run forward 10 paces, jump up in the air, with a backflip and catch the guy right in the face manuvers; I kept saying to myself "Why isn't he trying to block or dodge that? Why is the bad guy just standing there with his arms at his sides? Why is he ignoring all of these gigantic openings Cruise was leaving when he was setting up for these jumps?" But I guess it is just a movie, just like the Harlem Globetrotters are just Basketball...
I read the internet for the articles.
>I refuse to see any MI movie that doesn't have the theme song in 5. Lalo where are you?
For what it's worth, Schiffren later acknowledged in an interview that if he'd thought of the trick of introducing the theme in 5 and then switching to 4 like U2 did for the original MI movie, he'd have preferred to have done it that way.
But yeah, 5 is cooler; confuse the dance crowd.
--
Also, I don't think the bad guy was really a lunatic. That's cliche, and I think that they tried to keep that from happening. I think that part of the reason for the love triangle in the movie is so that we get a good idea of why he hates Ethan Hunt so much. In that light, he's just an extraordinarily greedy, jealous human being. But I don't think he's just a cliche movie villain.
This didn't really strike me as a true "Mission: Impossible" story. Rather, as Taco mentioned, it was more of a creative outlet for John Woo. The stunts are _great_ - but after awhile there's only so many ways you can kill a guy. This movie started wearing on me at about the 1:15 mark, and never came around after that.
If you ask me, the first M:I was a lot better. For starters, it was true to its roots: it had an actual team of people doing all sorts of cool secret agenty stuff the whole time. There was a mission. It was impossible. And so on.
MI2 really wasn't like this at all. There are three competing strands or directions in which this movie meanders: Woo's fetish with windy slo-mos and 2x Berettas, Cruise's totally incongruous, undying love for Thandie Newton (more on that later), and same vague, yarn about diseases and Greek gods. They take precedence in that order.
Now, if you ask me, that is just stupid. The original MI never dealt with sex in the manner this film does. Nor did it have such incomprehensible plots. I don't deny the directors a little creative freedom here, but through the whole movie I kept thinking about how they were trying to turn Ethan Hunt into a James Bond, minus the smarm. Cruise literally gets smitten (in the span of three minutes, another hiccup in the plot), and from there out his whole motivation is to get this girl back and screw the pants off of her. There are a few cool gadgets, but nothing like the first movie.
The final straw was the portrayal of Ving Rhames. Now, I thought he really stole the show in the first movie. His swagger was the perfect foil to Cruise's cold, calculating, "Kittridge - you have never seen me upset" demeanor. Compare that to this movie, and he is reduced to an annoying caricature of himself, kind of an amalgam of John Shaft and a corner street pimp. He utters lines like "That bastard put a hole in my Armani" with total seriousness. Ugh.. I found myself yearning for the much cooler, much geekier Rhames in M:I, the guy who drooled over kickass hardware and didn't seem to worry too much about his suit.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Both bikes were Triumph's. The red one was a Daytona, the black a Speed Triple.
Being a bit of a motorcycle geek, I mainly went to see the motorcycle stunts, and was not disappointed. Absolutely unreal, and then to think that they were performed without protective gear - good lord.
At first I was surprised that they could keep the bikes up on grass / sand, but then I noticed that they had full knobbies on for the off-road scenes. Never seen an MX tire on a Triumph before...
The whole 'evil biotech virus and cure' plot has been done many times before - A few weeks ago, the mighty Joe Bob of TNT's Monstervision aired Body Armor, which has the exact same plot. Perhaps not coincidently, it is currently (1:30PM EST) being shown on the local WB affiliate in Connecticut. Check your local listings. Its pretty amusing - it has Ron Perelman, a Dynasty chick, a bunch of stunt guys trying to act, and the mandatory comic relief in the form of Ron Howard's brother Clint. Also putting in a brief appearance at the beginning is John Rhys-Davies, of Sliders ?fame?. Don't waste the eight bucks - just watch Body Armor. Btw, if you can't stay up to watch Joe Bob, you should tape it. His analysis of movies is brilliant, brutal, and incredibly funny.
Yes, but Taco's review wasn't long, meandering and stupid.
Roman Legion was using Mongol recurve bows
What you saw were Syrian auxiliaries with their typical bows. These exact archers are depicted on Trajan's (beginning of 2nd century AD) column. Shorter bows (the ones that you mistakenly call Mongol) were in use at least in the 6th century BC (that's right, almost a millennium earlier) by the Scythians.
This is roughly equivalent to Mel Gibson using a machinegun in Braveheart.
I wanted to let this comment stand in all its singular glory. Feeling good about yourself yet?
The Roman Legions used javelins.
During the Roman empire (as opposed to republic), soldiers became less dependable and therefore less likely to use the sword to good effect. The spaces between cohorts lessened and the battle line again evolved to a phalanx. Pila (which is what you are thinking of) evolved to longer and sturdier spears, appropriate in a phalanx type formation.
12th century ballistas in the 3rd century AD.
The same evolution required more artillery for the defense of camps and for softening up the enemy's line of battle. This is perfectly illustrated in Gladiator. What you assume to be 12th century was in fact in widespread use in the 4th century BC.
The stirrup, allowing effective cavalry, also had not been invented.
I did not notice stirrups. OTOH, I was not looking for them, as you were with your expert eye for such things. I was amused, however, by your implication that effective cavalry did not exist since there were no stirrups. Go tell Alexander's Companions, or Attila.
an EMPEROR challenging a SLAVE to a duel?!?!?
Commodus, Caligula and a couple of others fought in the arena while emperor. Sue your history teacher.
Has anyone else noticed the bad guys in *both* the MI films to date are current or former MI employees?
Seems to me the fastest cure for this is to just shut down the MI office.
Did anyone else have more fun seeing Nicole Kidman and George Clooney in "The Peacemaker" than her husband in both MIs to date?
Disclaimer: I haven't liked Cruise in anything since Risky Business (I haven't seen Magnolia), so it should come as no surprise that I consider his performance bland and underwhelming here. He is a pretty boy, though his looks are rapidly fading into a sort of roguish version of George Hamilton. However, looks alone do not an actor make, though they do, unfortunately, make many a star.
.02 cents worth.
Thandie would look marvellous with or without the cleavage. I don't know whether she can act. I hadn't seen her previously, and nothing in this film tests her enough to pass any serious judgement.
As for Woo... I love everything he has done except for this, though I might be alone in considering Face/Off one of his weaker works. I attribute the failure of this work to the PG-13 restriction. The storyline was no better or worse than is usual in action-adventure fare, but, frankly, this film was still twice as exciting as the original (which isn't saying much, as I thought the first film sucked).
Just my
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Doesn't anyone go to the movies for just fun anymore? Do you always have to be intellectually stimulated by every movie you go to? Geez, people, lighten up. Have some fun, relax, blow some steam. If you thought it sucked, you probably went expecting a deep flick.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Cowboy Bebop is one of the better Anime series to come out in a while. Good storyline, funny, good action scenes. Not too much gratuitous sex or gory violence. Definitely worth renting. Props to Bandai for making it a 5 TV episode/DVD release.
That said, MI2 is all about style. But it's copied style - they took the Matrix and Face Off, and added a cheezy sub-Bond movie plot. I mean halfway through they have a guy EXPLAIN the plot. Not worth seing, unless you don't care about any semblance of a story.
Actually you can create fake and realistic looking OS's with Director for Windows *or* Mac which is likely how they do it but that has nothing to do with it.
The reason is Apple has always spent a lot of money on product placement in films and television, like when you see a barrage of name brand products being used by characters in a lot of movies. Like a movie targeted at children where the characters pass by or enter a McDonald's or a Burger King- so the advertiser can do a tie-in in real life. Apple has had tie-in promotions with movies too; just can't remember which ones. Kinda realated, the US Navy has a large PR office that actively lobbies Hollywood studios and gets involved in projects; lending advisors, equipment, etc, ala 'Top Gun'. Notice that there are a lot more Navy themed movies out there in the last 15-20 years from H'wood than other military branches? The Navy is more active: it's just another form of product placement- a recruiting film that people pay to see.
Well, not quite. The Navy reserves the right to review any script before they lend a helping hand, so to speak. Ever watched "A Few Good Men"? The Navy refused to help out on this film because they felt it tarnished their image (rightfully so, I might add). This is why, in the opening scenes of the film, where there are a bunch of Navy guys twirling their rifles, they don't look quite as good as real life officers. The producers had to borrow cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in place of them. Other than that you are completely right. Some of the stories I have heard about the lengths the Navy will go to accomodate a film that promotes the Navy would make your jaw drop :)
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I, for one, was glad to sit down for about 2 hours and just go 'ooooo.'
Gratuitous slow motion? Hello, meet John Woo. I was glad enough that he had a budget to use hi-speed cameras as opposed to slowing down the frames.
Plot holes and no character development? Hello, meet Action Genre.
Insult to intelligence? Hello, meet the PG-13 rating. This was a concious choice to broaden the audience. Think of it as backlash from the loud "What the hell?" the audience gave the first one.
Matrix ripoff? Hello, what the fuck did you think the Wachowski brothers are inspired by? They had Jet Li's choreographer for crying out loud.
I walked in expecting some nice-as-hell fight scenes, explosions that weren't re-shot from five different angles, an attempt at plot, no attempt at character development, and a hot member of the opposite sex. I walked out getting what I expected.
All in all, it's a fun flick, I'd go see it again at matinee or something.
"You wouldn't know her. She lives in Niagra Falls."
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Overall, I am disappointed that John Woo decided to direct this movie, because even "Ethan Hunt" isn't the same "Ethan Hunt" anymore. Shame shame. Go see Gladiator instead.
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
But you're geeks! Is that even allowed?
(runs off to check rulebook)
The matrix is almost an exception, but for people endlessly bitching about keanu (sp?) reeves.
I don't see why more people don't realize that Keanu Reeves was a perfect actor to play Neo. The problem most people have is that Keanu isn't a martial artist badass, and they thought Neo was supposed to be a martial artist badass.
He isn't. Neo is no more a martial artist badass than I am a rocket-launcher-toting Strogg killing machine; both of us are just skinny, pasty white computer geeks who don't sleep regular hours. Neo just got to play with a much better computer.
And c'mon, didn't Keanu do the "pasty white computer geek" thing pretty well? He spent all weekend in his cluttered room developing a healthy monitor tan, he acted appropriately just a little dazed each time he was forced to confront the "real world" (at least I'll give Keanu the benefit of a doubt and assume that dazed look was intentional), and he hammed it up like a goofy kid beating his dad at Soul Calibur when he finally got the chance to kick a little computer-enhanced ass. If you were a wuss who suddenly was taught every form of fighting imaginable and could move with superhuman reflexes, wouldn't your behavior be a little corny and a lot cocky too?
From what I can gather, he (the bad guy) wanted stock options in the biochem company, and when the outbreak is supposed to occur in the busiest streets of Sydney, the biochem company will go rich by supplying the cure.
however, was the "outbreak" supposed to occur because of the girl, who was told to be dropped off in a crowded place in Sydney, or or some other fashion? Clearly the virus is not airborne, and not contagious (everyone in contact with the girl, including Tom Cruise, would surely be dead, and they never hit themselves with the vaccine), so did they plan to run around with syringes injecting people with Chimera, or spray Chimera'ed blood at people?
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
As far as the plot went, I did think it was a nice touch that the bad guy was obviously smarter than the good guy, and anticipated his every move.
Anyone going to this movie for intellectual stimulation deserves to be disappointed. It was exactly what one should expect - lots of stunts, very well directed and filmed - the car and motorcycle chases were very well done. (i know there are cries about killing the porsche and audi, but if you really want to cry, there is also the hidden: victim a ferrari 308gts, the original gone in 60 seconds: victim tons of valuable muscle cars, including a hemi cuda tboned by a semi, and others)
in fairness, i didn't have to pay to see it - not having to shell out $9 for a movie helps (what does silicon valley think it is? - midtown manhattan?!).
anyway go to have fun, if you want intellectual stimulation - go to something else.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
I'm wondering if anyone assciated with either movie ever bothered to watch the TV series. Jim, Roland, Barney, and crew could do anything, and they did it with style, stelth and intelligence. This is just more Hollywood pap not worthy of the MI name. I refuse to see any MI movie that doesn't have the theme song in 5. Lalo where are you? The best thing that can come of this movie is FX putting the tv series back into rotation again.
- daniel
- daniel
Turn off your computer and go outside
Luckly I won a bet earlier this month so I didn't have to pay for this movie. I thought the plot was incredibly cliche. The cinnematography was cool, but that was about it.
That being said, I wasn't all that impressed with Gladiator either. Perhaps my hopes were too high after reading all the good reviews on that one.
I usually base my thoughts on a movie by the way I feel when I'm walking back to my car after it's over. If it's good, I'm saying to myself "wow, that was just amazing". I haven't had that feeling about a movie since The Matrix.
Why is it that apologists for really bad movies always pull out the same tired cliche about ``intellectual stimulation?'' I may be pretty dense at times, but I assure you I wasn't thick enough to walk into MI2 expecting to see some sort of european art film or anything like that. Nevertheless, I don't think it is asking too much for the holes in the plot to be smaller than the helicopter our heroes were flying around in. I mean, the bad guy's master plan made no sense whatsoever, on any level (as if he's going to just walk in and take his seat on the board of directors after having released a super-flu on the world. Hello, McFly?). Add to that a love story between two characters that had no chemistry whatsoever, mix in some glaring continuity errors, add a dash of fight scenes that would make an anime director blush, stir, and simmer for two hours, and you have a recipe for a seriously mediocre film.
I'm not saying I hated it; it had its good points. Some of the stunts were cool, and the soundtrack was pretty good, but a film can get a hell of a lot better than this without venturing into ``deep flick'' territory. If you haven't seen it already, wait for it to come out in the $2 theatre.
-rpl
Speaking of the plot, I've heard quite a bit of commentary in different reviews and 'hollywood' type stuff that said that they purposely dumbed down the plot, because one of the largest weak points of the first movie was that nobody understood what the hell was going on. I admit it, after the first time I watched the first movie, I didn't have a CLUE what was going on.
This movie was not like that. You could actually understand what was going on, even though there was quite a bit of artifice in different parts.
I thought that the plot was not the greatest, but in terms of action, this was one of the most badass movies I've ever seen.
Much better than gladiator anyway, which was just an extremely bloody remake of Braveheart in Roman times. (If you've seen Braveheart, you roughly know the entire plot of Gladiator except that instead of fighting for freedom, the gladiator is fighting *for* the republic of rome after a fashion)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Aren't you people boycotting The Man's movies? I know I am, unless and until the DeCSS suit is dropped. There are plenty of fine independent films that don't make you fund a witch hunt against a computer programmer.
I just have one question for the script writers: if the biotech scientiest could "look at" the DNA sequence of the virus to confirm that it was actually it, then why the hell would they need the virus anyway? If you know the DNA, you have the virus....DUH!
Lets see what else...
There's the mandatory self destruct button...
The movie goes for at least an hour without any action happening or anything the least bit interesting going on to keep you from walking out...
I love the way they combined the matrix and outbreak...
I love the way the laws of physics are defied on a regular basis...
I'm sure there's more but I'm tired of bitching
This is a basic consumer movie. There were aspects from almost every genere: action, suspense, chick-flick, thriller, etc... maybe even some horror, depending on how you look at it. The plot was terrible in order to make room for all the different aspects.
The whole mask thing was waaay overdone. Too terribly predictable. You could snap your fingers on almost the exact moment when a 'special event' would take place. The characters were poorly developed and they had little interaction with each other, as was the case in MI.
I personally enjoyed MI, and enjoy the James Bond flicks. However, mixing the two just doesn't work. They're not the same type of flick.
I was fairly disappointed too, cuz the theater didn't have teh speakers up very loud. Gay.
However, I did enjoy the movie. I'd not see it again, and it wasn't a good movie, but I enjoyed it. My fiance and I made fun of it the whole way through. There were sooo many rip offs from other films. She said there were even some from Tron. (I've nto seen the whole thing.)
I doubt I would have enjoyed it at all, if I had watched it on my own. It would have been nice if it was a good, solid action flick. OR a good solid suspense, thriller, etc. That's the type of movie this guy likes. This was too terribly kludgish.
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Character development? He's never heard of it.
Even the first MI movie had that going for it.
Take out all the slo-mo and the movie would be 15 minutes long, too
Seriously, though, if you want to laugh, go see it. It's the most incredibly bad movie I've see this year. So many editing/continuity errors that I stopped counting. This movie was made for a 6th grade level audience because of the overly-cliche and explanatory script and framing. Hey, there's a zoom-up on that cigar cutter! I wonder if it'll play an important part of the next shot?
Hey John: pick a frame rate and go with it!
And never, never destroy a piece of artwork like a new 911 Carrera Cabriolet just for the sake of spending the money! Ouch. That ridiculous scene hurt my eyes moreso than the others.
--- witty signature
if you're interested in making cool fake OSes on a mac, check out kaleidoscope.net or on windows, check out litestep.net. these are both really nifty theming engines for their various platforms. of course, if you're lucky enough to be running X, just go to themes.org and take it away...
the bottom line is that most modern OSes can be customized much more than is first apparent, so if you want more little bells and whistles and neat stuff, you can probably get it with a little tinkering...
Enjoy!
--
It becomes very obviously, very early on that this movie is brain-candy, and you will not enjoy it if you nitpick about the impossibilities. ( Physics is, of course, the first thing to go.. dropping dozens of stories only to stop at the last second inches above ground ( Tom barely stopped above the glass floor in the first movie ), spinning of cars, motorcycles in a graceful waltz, etc ).
The character development was completely non-existant. You'll have to have seen the previous movie to be able to appretiate the hacker dude. I felt ZERO emotion in regards to the "essential" romance part of the plot. It seems to me that they didn't want to bother working out romance in an action movie, so that by making it part of the main plot it was more justifiable. Still, I have to give them credit for giving this otherwise useless female character a vital role. ( personally I didn't think she was so hot, but she wasn't bad ). Furthering the notion of character, there were no tragedies ( with the exception of the Tom Cruse getting shot scene, which was rather transparent ( though it still caught some moans from our audiance ) ). It didn't hold a candle to emotion in MI-1 in this regard.
MI-1, I think did a good job of linking to the original series. Same basic characters, repeated use of the exploding message, strong plot around the CIA, pseudo-complicated in a spy-movie sort of way. This had minimal ties, all of which could very well have been after thoughts ( oh yea, we need to add something MI-ish ). It became it's own generic action movie ( Bond, Schwartzineger, whatever ). I liked the quote "Matrix meets Outbreak".
Now, my biggest gripe. Many action fans like a pretty face or two ( Bond style ), no plot necessary ( or at least simple good-guy/ bad-guy.. Or even the modern, renegade good-guy/ imaculate, well respected bad-guy ), lots of action, and martial arts ( I'm still recovering from the bland Chuck Noris films ). So it definately has the elements for that genre. There's one slight problem.. IT'S BORING!! There were so many parts that I physically looked away from the screen in bordom. All the artsy fartsy slow-mo shots of the surrounding environment ( which supposedly sets the mood ), the various conversations, and side actions just all put me off. And it is by this token that I say it's a bad movie. If you exclusively focus on a genre, with the exclusion of at least good directing / writing, then you had damn well better fit the genre well. Action movies need non-stop action ( See Terminator II for reference ( minus some tiny plot scenes ) ).
Still, the movie had some redeeming values. Some cool quotes "when yellow dot reaches the red dot", "she's a woman. She has all the necessary qualifications", "this is not mission too difficult", etc. And in the true James bond spirit, the intro scene was better/cooler than most of the rest of the movie.
Conclusion: Go see it at a matinee JUST for the intro. You won't be disappointed. If you want, you can sneak into the ending half hour; It has the action that you might be interested in. Just ignore what the girl is doing. She's supposed to be committing suicide, even though the point of releasing her was to infect Sidney.. ( what, is she supposed to swim out there? )
-Michael
-Michael
Odd, there are already 124 posts (probably a couple more by the time this shows up), and not a single one has the word "clam" in its subject.
Okay I've been wondering since the first M:I and seeing the second one brought the question back. How do they make those "fake high tech" operating systems that Hunt uses on the Powermacs. You know what I'm talking about - the sweet looking window manager and apps that he uses to do things like interface with the satellite, etc. It has tons of beeps and clicking and lots of cool features - 3D rotating heads, etc. etc. Any ideas?
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
"And, uh...I get to keep the equipment when we're done." -- Luther
ObDVDRant: Why isn't "Hard-Boiled" available yet?
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Oh, and the music! don't get me started on the music. When you were at the most tense, action packed moment of the movie, the music was trying to put you to sleep! I don't know why, but it was. But for all these fault, i do not blame the star, director, editor, composer or writer. The editor is a member of A.C.E. not something easy to do, and something to be applauded. The writer, Robert Towne, wrote Chinatown, an incredible movie. The Director, John Woo, a master of his craft. Tom Cruise, a wonderful action hero. The composer wrote lovely music.
But you wonder, if everyone is so fscking wonderful, why did the movie suck so much? Well, i would have to say that the blame rests solely on the one who made sure the everything came together in just the right way. The producer. Because in this movie, i assure you that nothing came together the right way. well, maybe the credits did, but i was too disgusted to watch those...
my final verdict... I want my 126 Minutes back, don't waste your time.
I was boycotting the MPAA because of the DeCSS thing. Fortunately for me, they accidentally gave one of my friends an extra ticket, so I got in without giving the bastards any of my money. If you can manage it that way, it's probably worth slightly more than what you pay for it.
Notes:
Excluding vehicles, 6 instances of product placement that my friends and I noticed. Versacci, Motorola, (jewelry company whose name I can't remember), Kodak, Macintosh, (one more I can't remember)
Look for the mention of the DNA of a virus (viruses have RNA).
If you have a good audience (we did), this is a lot of fun. At various places, people yelled things like "kill her!" "he can't, the heroine can't die", etc. Throughout all of the second half of the film, the entire audience was laughing, especially at the fight scenes.
-Dave Turner.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
I would tend to agree that his debating techniques need a little refining, but so far nobody has decided to call him on any of his facts.
Maybe it was just a response to what he felt was a 'know it all' attitude in the original post. I don't know enough about Roman history to say, myself.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
In regards to all of you who have said the fighting style used by Cruise in this movie is "bogus" or "unrealistic", need to try learning a little about the subject before you go blasting your mouths off. To quote a few: "...and Tom Cruise performing stupid backflip karate kicks that might work if they were in Cowboy BeBop, but don't even come close when actual human actors pretend to perform them in slow motion." "And don't even get me started about all the laws-of-physics-out-the-window stuff that happened during the fight scenes. It was all way too much like the Matrix, but wait! We aren't in a computer-generated world here! This is supposedly real!" "And I'm sorry, I don't think that doing flip-kicks are going to be that effective." Many/most of the moves used by cruise in this movie are from a brazilian martial art known as Capoeira, which I myself am a student of, and find it to be incredibly effective as a fighting style. Granted, the bad guy would never have been able to take the kind of punishment Cruise dished out, as several of the kicks used would cripple any normal human being, but the kicks themselves weren't unrealistic in any way whatsoever. Just thought I'd throw in my two cents.
I think the thing that started Gladiator off on the wrong foot for me was the fact that the Roman Legion was using Mongol recurve bows and 12th century ballistas in the 3rd century AD. This is roughly equivalent to Mel Gibson using a machinegun in Braveheart. Never mind that longbows (the first large European bows used heavily for combat) were invented by the Welsh a noticable while later. The Roman Legions used javelins. The javelins were made with soft metal heads that would bend if they hit a shield, so that the user was stuck with dead weight instead of a useful shield. The time and place references did not get better as the movie went on, either. The stirrup, allowing effective cavalry, also had not been invented.
As far as plot goes, it was at least as predictable as MI:2, if not more so. The only three-dimensional character in the film was the former gladiator who owned Maximus. All the rest of the characters were lucky to get one dimension. The plot was painful and the ending simply absurd. Which is more unlikely, Cruise's nutty aerobatic fighting style, or an EMPEROR challenging a SLAVE to a duel?!?!?
I'm sorry. If you want a brainless plot with some good action and entertainment, go see either. If you want a good plot, respectable dialogue, etc. don't see either. I am just astounded that Gladiator can be held up as a better movie than MI:2, when the first is a poor rehash of old gladiator movies and the second is an occaisionally inventive action flick in the spy motif. The only possible reasons I can come up with is that people have seen more spy movies recently, or that they just want to see people dismembered.
Argh. Anyway, if you like John Woo movies, as I do, you will be entertained by MI:2. If you are a medieval weaponry buff, as I am, you will like the fight scenes in Gladiator. If you like to laugh, as I do, you might just like Jackie Chan's mockery of the old west in Shanghai Noon better than either one. The script is witty and the action is good. Plus, it probably cost about a tenth of what either of the other two did.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
http://fox.mit.edu/skunk/soft/fsv/
Lars -
(MINOR SPOILER WARNING - BUT IF YOU HAVE HALF A BRAIN YOU'LL FIGURE IT OUT ANYWAY :)
I thought it was a pretty good movie overall, except for one thing- those #@$(*% masks!
In the last scene, I half expected the two of them to pull off masks, and they'd actually be someone else - and how on earth did Ethan get masks for him and the other guy?