Well, what to say about this film? We can start with the formalities. I went to the cinema at Rochester, the tide was very low. I could see all the mud banks at the edge of the river along with the dip at the end showing the main channel. We were late getting to the cinema because the junction on the motorway was closed so we had to go to the next junction and then return back. I didn’t mind being late because we missed most of the adverts. We did see a few trailers though. The trailer for F1 managed to make the film look as boring as fuck. So, back to Mission: Impossible. I rated this film on IMDB and there is a guide to my rating system here.
I really didn’t enjoy this film. Had I not been with other people I would probably have walked out after the first half hour and overall the film is 2 hours and 50 minutes. I turned to JCBFan after about half an hour and asked “do you understand any of this?”. The reply was “no”. Maybe there were loads of references to MI films I haven’t seen? Maybe I needed to learn a bit more about the characters but the first half hour was really disjointed and made zero sense. I think it was meant to be a “getting the team together” thing, but it was really badly done.
The rest of the over two hours of film was really just two large set pieces of action. Some submarine stuff which was done better in Hunt For Red October and The Abyss and also some flying stuff which was alright I guess. At least I now know how to punch someone piloting a biplane when I’m holding on to the side – the move was used twice and it annoyed me – although why change something that works. The set design for the submarine was pretty special and the way it rotated was impressive. But the story part of this was shit.
The general plot seemed to be that the internet is bad and it is going to kill the human race. This I agree with and if it was deliberate to warn of the perils of social media and untruths then that would be a good part of the film. There’s an AI going to destroy the world and is slowly taking control of nuclear weapons – which hilariously is shown on a giant map on the wall inside a mountain. WHILE at the same time people push little models of ships around on giant maps in the room which was very WWII. So much of this film was just stupid. I didn’t understand what they were trying to do and why.
The American Navy was scared of the Russian carrier but it’s a heap of shit so that wouldn’t really bother them. The USA also have a LOAD of carriers. I don’t think the naval tensions were really worth it. Did you know you can fly a DC3 from the Bering Straight to South Africa in less than twelve hours? Those DC3s are notorious for transcontinental journeys in no time. Oh, and they are super comfortable. Also, people seem to have normal volume conversations in loads of situations where the actual noise would be consuming. If you’ve ever seen pilots in little planes they wear headsets. There’s always noise.
We need to know a bit about the data transfer rates that work in this film. The “entity” – what a fucking shit name – could “move” very quickly. Even when a thingy was connected to a boggler in the middle of South Africa away from any form of internet connection. Did you know that pick pockets are really good at grabbing something and taking it within a 100 millisecond window? Human reactions are hardwired at best to 190 milliseconds so she wouldn’t have been able to take the dongle out in time. Why was there a woman who speaks only French which most people understand but she also understands all the English being spoken? Who was fighting who in the cave? Who turned up to start that fight? Why do people who live on an island in the arctic know the yield of atomic weapons and detailed specifications about how long you have to run after cutting the wires? God this film was absolute shit.
Angela Bassett was pretty good in it.
