noisy

Rating: Null/10 (20 August 2013)

I haven't been interested in the Mission Impossible movies since I saw the first one, which traded in the wonderful con jobs of the original TV series for mindless action. But when I saw that J.J. Abrams had directed this one, I thought perhaps he had added something interesting to the mix.
He hadn't.
The film begins with a fairly intense scene with Cruise tied up watching the bad guy threaten to kill a woman. It's a well done scene that hopes to keep you interested once the movie flashes back.
Then we see happy Cruise at a party getting sucked into the field after having left it. None of this is interesting or surprising, but after all, it's just setup up for what comes next.
What comes next is guns and explosions, an air battle cleverly set on a wind farm, and an unfortunate outcome. Then there's Cruise getting yelled out for that outcome.
And about a half hour into the film I said, I don't care. I like movies where people shoot guns and blow up stuff, but I need to care about something. I need to like the characters. I need to be interested in the story. I need to be engaged by the dialog. In MI3 I felt I was just being assaulted by unpleasant violence and then assaulted by tedious exposition and dreary romance before the next blow up.
While I hoped Abrams would do something interested, what I saw of this movie is completely by the numbers, even including not one but two damsel-in-distress scenarios in the first quarter.
I like a lot of big Hollywood blockbusters, but this movie is everything those who hate such movies complain about, a big, macho, noisy time waster. It will take someone more impressive than Abrams to lure me to anything else in this series, so unless Scorcese decides to take a stab at it, this will be my second, and last, MI film.