Love Lies Bleeding

Rating: 8/10 (16 May 2006)

The smartest decision made in Hollywood in recent years (by Cruise?) has been the constant redefinition of Mission: Impossible as a series (lets not call it a franchise - an uglier term than which I don't know). First de Palma, then Woo, and now, improbably, Abrams. They almost seem to represent the three essences - mind, body, and spirit, in that order.
With de Palma, it was all coolly cerebral game playing, a blockbuster that made you work hard to untangle the plot and dispatched likable minor characters with the icy demeanour of a sniper. It had lengthy tracking shots, a camera that passed through walls, and three big set pieces that unspooled with clockwork precision.
With Woo, it was sensual - never mind the plot, feel the heat of the explosions, hear the growl of the engines, watch some of the most impossibly beautiful destruction ever filmed unfold like a painting in motion. The epic female vocals reinforced the point.
With Abrams, it's all about the emotions. He could no more treat his characters with De Palma's olympian disdain then he could slave them to Woo's visual flair. These characters bleed when they get hurt.
When, in the best action sequence of the film, a bridge comes under attack, the viewer isn't simply swept up in the excitement - in the back of the mind lingers the understanding that the balance of power is changing, that a character who was formerly safe is about to become a target - and that we've been told what will happen to her long in advance. An early sacrifice ensures that we're not certain that any character is safe - any of them could go, at any time. For once, we care enough for this to matter.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is the best screen villain I've seen in a long time - he feels genuinely threatening; simply by uttering the hero's name he changes the entire tenor of the film, makes it queasy with unease.
Michelle Monaghan is great in what seems to be a small part; she gets to be the action girl at the end, which may feel a little unlikely but suits the film entirely (and it's nice to see Tom Cruise step aside a little to let his co-stars shine in moments like this - the unspeakably cool Maggie Q benefits in particular).
Other wonderful bits include Simon Pegg's scary-funny monologue, and Cruise's fake enthusiasm for traffic at the beginning - 'it's like a living organism!' He comes across like a real human being for the first time in a long time.
This has been the most under-rated, underestimated series in modern American cinema - by turns smart, overwhelming and now moving. The action film has long been a tired genre, but these three films have helped to wake it up just a little.