After seeing Mission Impossible 3, I'm of the firm belief that "Dude, where's my car" and "Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery" should have won Oscars. At the very least, they should've got nominations. I know, I know, suspension of disbelief et al is required. But honestly, you can't leave all of your brains behind.
The Brian De Palma directed MI1 had something to it (like Kirstin Scott Thomas). In any case, ten years back, you barely had any expectations and hence were easily thrilled by Mr. Cruise on a bullet train surviving a helicopter crash inside a tunnel. Hell, you had U2's supercool remix of Lalo Schifrin's original tune.
With John Woo taking over for MI2 in 2000, you had the everyone-shoots-sideways, motorcycles-and-cars-turn-sideways, doves-fly-everywhere routine. And of course a deterioration of the storyline. Villain progresses from the rogue file of MI1 to a deadly injectible virus. But you still had Limp Bizkit's remix of Lalo Schifrin's original tune.
What about Part 3 directed by Mr. J. J. Abrams? Injectible virus is now "Rabbit's foot". We are never told what it is. We are never shown how Mr. Cruise steals it. Barring of course, our hero using the "fulcrum" principle to jump from one skyscraper to land on another, slide down, shoot two villainous guards while sliding down and land into..umm.. some place where the "Rabbit's Foot" is kept. The Rabbit Foot when finally revealed turns out to be a glass bottle of red-coloured Gatorade (or some such). No MI tune by anyone, bar the original.
This bit of dialogue is up there in best parting line of all time.
Ethan Hunt to Luther Strickel and his gang (as he departs to give the Rabbits foot to the villain): So I'll see you around
Luther Strickel: You know Ethan, where you're going, you and Julia could both get killed.
Ethan Hunt: Ok. So I guess I won't see you round.
The only crime that beats all of above is to cast the ethereal Bahar Soomekh (remember her in Crash?) in a bit role, murder her and explain it as "Mr. Davies doesn't like failure".
As always, proper reviews left to the established lot.
PS - It was a weird coincidence that I got this forward the day after I saw MI3. It was titled "Bollywood defies Newton's laws" and the body starts with "In the movies of Rajanikanth, Newton was confused to such an extent that he went paranoid". Here are a few scenes
[1] Rajanikanth has a Brain Tumor which, according to the doctors can't be cured and his death is imminent. In one of the fights, our great Rajanikanth is shot in the head. To everybody's surprise, the bullet passes through his ears taking away the tumor along with it and he is cured! Long Live Rajanikanth!
[2] In another movie, Rajanikanth is confronted with 3 gangsters. Rajanikanth has a gun but unfortunately only one bullet and a knife.Guess, what he does? He throws the knife at the middle gangster & shoots the bullet towards the knife. The knife cuts the bullet into 2 pieces, which kills both the gangsters on each side of the middle gangster & the knife kills the middle one. Long Live Rajanikanth!
[3] Rajanikanth is chased by a gangster. Rajanikanth has a revolver but no bullets in it. Guess what he does. Nah? Not even in your remotest imaginations. He waits for the gangster to shoot. As soon as the gangster shoots, Rajanikanth opens the bullet compartment of his revolver and catches the bullet. Then, he closes the bullet compartment and fires his gun. Bang...the gangster dies... Long Live Rajanikanth!
[4] Rajanikanth gets to know that the villain is on the other side of a very high wall. So high that Rajanikanth can't jump even if he tries like one of those superman techniques that our heroes normally use. Rajanikanth has to desperately kill the villain because it's the climax. Rajanikanth suddenly pulls two guns from his pockets. He throws one gun in the air and when the gun has reached above the height of the wall, he uses the second gun and shoots at the trigger of the first gun in air.The first gun fires off and the villain is dead. Long Live Rajanikanth!
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16 comments:
Absolute hilarity, the Rajnikanth bit...There's a fortune awaiting the guy who can make a montage of "Long-Live-Rajnikanth" moments on film!
MI3 was so dumb and senseless that I actually took a good nap in between (seriously)
MI-I was the best... I didnt like MI2, but at least the actions was not so bad. With MI3, we have reached a point of no-return
And there are a lot of Mithu-da sequences which beat the Rajni ones too :)
first fanaa, and now MI3... hope u get third time lucky!
cheers,
anuja
p.s. thx for linking me on your blog :D
You mean you didn't like it?
Those Rajnikanth sequences are hilarious to imagine. I'd absolutely love to see something like that done on TV. (Then again, I remember a Simpsons' episode with a TV show spoof where a character gets shot by a robber - but catches the bullet and throws it back at the robber, hitting him in the chest and knocking him out. Brilliance.)
As for MI3 - it follows the general rule of thumb that most movie sequels are tripe (the Godfather II being one of the very, very few exceptions), and that sequels to sequels are even worse. No surprises there. I'm interested though in seeing just how bad the inevitable MI4 can be.
did julia deliver a baby without screaming? the scientology way.
if she did, i'll watch it.
@ Purush - oye sher ! That montage would be better than this movie. Blog man blog !
@ Nirav - you know I think that there should be a film fest of those Mithun movies. And we need to properly appreciate that movies that have absolutely no pretense, are at the very least worthy of praise(!), relative to big budget trash like MI3. And aside - did you know that those Rajanikanth (sic) sequences have also been apocryphally credited to Mithunda ?!
@ Anuja - Sure wish I do ! I thought the key was no expectations. But stuff like this even beats lowered expectations. My pleasure in linking you up.
@ tom cruise - you mean it was you in the movie?
@ Salil - ah the Simpsons ! brilliant ! there were so many more great spoofs they'd done ! Agree on sequels being trashy.
@ nevermind - they never got between the sheets given Mr. Hunt's mission-should-he-choose-to-accept-it. Unless the Scientology way makes babies possible by smooching !
Movies like MI series or even fast and furious series are make believe.....perhaps if you could have realised the creativity behind you'd have loved it.....
One cannot compare it with Austin Powers etc as it is an altogether different league.....rajnikanth bit was refreshing though
he he!!
Good writing there!
even i thought these feats were achieved by mithunda :( Ok Rajnikanth rules :))
After Fanna I am very cautious abt watching a movie :)
@ Nitin - You said, (1) MI3 is a make-believe movie and (2) if i'd understood the creativity behind this make-believe movie, I'd have loved it. Er...I don't think I got you right dude.
@ Chandni - thank you :)
@ Sapphire (nice name!) - hey, refer my reply to Nirav above! Those same scenes have also been attributed to Mithunda as well. It was an apocryphal and unconfirmed mail forward !
Don't be that cautious. Must be some movie, we'd like. Yet, I'm now getting more cautious (!) about Kabhi Alvida....read in a lot places that it's Karan Johar's take on "Closer". Yuck !
Rajnikant is not the only one..there's this south indian actor called Ballaya too. Check out this movie and his MI2 moves
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ygR68FIvri0&search=ballaya
GreatBong (Arnab) had a brilliant post on this too..You can find it here.
IndianArchie
Musings that Amuse
I loved MI3, saw it yesterday.Awesome movie.
@ Indianarchie - I'd seen that earlier. Hilarious !
@ Azhar - I envy you my friend.
hmmm...heard about the one where mithunda races electricity? needless to say he wins, beating the travelling blue pulse (electricity as imagined by the director) by a mile and saves his mother and sis from electrocution.
@ R - hilarious. Wish there was a youtube video clip on that !
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