Is action everything?

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2000)

This is an exciting and stylish movie with a thin plot. But who wants a plot? I was never a MI fan, but I know the answer to that question. There are so many inventive and jaw-dropping stunts that visual interest never slackens - and this point, after all, is the reason to enjoy the missions. Of course they're impossible, and so is nearly everything that happens in this movie. Tom Cruise (star and co-producer) knows exactly what he wants to do, and he does it extraordinarily well. We ignore any yen for realism: the fun comes from the impossibility of it all. Lots of racing and crashing cars, a joust on motorcycles (really), and all the preposterous but fascinating techno-rubbish that MI buffs love so much. There are also 4-5 of those tiresome trademark face-peels. They're technically well done, but the concept somehow exceeds impossibility. If that's possible. The movie is purely a series of exciting and climactic exploits. They don't build, they accumulate, like a scrapbook of heroism. Unhappily, there's no tour-de-force sequence here, such as the stunning chopper-in-the-Chunnel masterpiece in the first `MI.' Closest to it, for me, was a gratuitous but great rock-climbing adventure near the very beginning of the movie. It was filmed on the sheer red cliffs near Moab, Utah, and the DVD extra dealing with this piece is fascinating. Most of the disk extras, however, add up to a paean to Tom's skill and courage in doing much of his own stunt work. They're worth watching anyway, and a couple actually tell us a bit about the creation of some of the startling effects. But the movie takes itself very seriously. I'm about 80% sure that's a fault. Might it have been more fun if it had been less earnest? Would audiences enjoy a chance to grin now and then, to break up the sustained sense of awe? (Is awe a flaw?) Perhaps we'll find out in the next MI. PS: The last names of Thandie Newton's character are Nordhoff-Hall. Is this any more than an inappropriate tribute to the team of writers of pre-WW2 Pacific adventures -- like `The Hurricane'? 7 stars out of 10.