Mission Unlikable

Rating: 3/10 (12 May 2007)

Former spy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is called back into action to recover a missing IMF Agent. But complications arise when his fiancée is captured and he must fight to get her back.
First off, I wanted something fun to turn my brain off to this weekend. I thought an action movie with Phillip Seymour Hoffman would be fun to watch. I was half-right. Hoffman is a treat. This film is not.
Tom tom tom. What kind of talentless egotrip is this film? Yes, we get to watch you run around like a gazelle hopped up on amphetamines (I just know that the footage was sped up). Yes, you shoot things and blow things up. But I thought you would've learned from what made for passable viewing in War of the Worlds. We need to see that your character is HUMAN. There's no suspense when a man can rail shoot three guys like it's no problem, run four miles without breaking much of a sweat, and all the other $hit in this film, unless I actually care about the characters. Tom-bot is bloody indestructible. They try, oh do they try to give Tom a human side, but there isn't any emotional depth to be found, and you'll find yourself thinking about other things when he hangs out with his wife and thinks about a now-dead former student.
Didn't care about Tom. Didn't care about Rhames, who really just nags and whines about relationships. Yuck. It's nigh insufferable. Rhys-Meyers is here as the other closeted gay actor, and he too, runs around a lot. Fishburne looks like a fat sack of crap. Post-Matrix depression? Maggie Q blows up a beautiful car. What is with the destruction of beautiful machines in action films these days? Do they think that middle to lower class audiences like to see things they'll never own get destroyed? Simon Pegg is in this for too little time. He's a joy and the screen lights up with his presence.
No one is taking this seriously except Hoffman. And while that's not entirely a bad thing, No one is taking this seriously enough to have fun. Hoffman has fun, as did I watching him (The opening scene of the film is by far the best one) but nearly everyone is just going (running, it would seem) through the paces. Stunts that should be amazing seem ho-hum, business as usual. People finish each others clichéd lines.
Now, a film has to be supremely awful for me to walk out (I'm not one of those patience-less shmucks that always walk out) but I'm not sure whether I could've stood this movie had it not been for the pause button. Aside from Hoffman, it's entirely forgettable. D+