If James Bond is still going to appear in movies at the end of the 21st century, I bet he will look an awful lot like Ethan Hunt. You could say that Hunt, the hero of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, is a 007 for our time.
Definition: Intercourse is more of a surprise and a distraction than a lifestyle. Stunts and special effects don’t distract the plot, but are the plot. The hero’s attention in new user items is geared more towards cybergadgets than sports cars. He isn’t a nationalist working for his government, but a hired agent working for a vague international agency. Most importantly, this agent doesn’t smoke, hardly drinks, and is in the physical condition of a triathlete.
Since I haven’t seen any of the Bond movies, I’ll let the late Roger Ebert go ahead and describe what the new Bond (at the time) looked like through his description: “The new Bond, in short, is a driven, over-achieving professional -- not the sort of gentleman sophisticate the British spy family used to cultivate. His small talk consists not of lascivious puns, but geekspeak. When he raised an eyebrow, it's probably not his, because he's a master of disguise and can hide behind plastic face masks so realistic even his cinematographer doesn't know for sure.”
The first “Mission: Impossible” had a plot no one understood. “Mission: Impossible 2,” released in 2000, has a plot you don’t need to understand. It’s been put together by the expert Hollywood script guy Robert Towne out of trademarks of other movies, most notably from Hitchcock’s “Notorious” in which the he takes the part of the hero first falling in love with the heroine, then cruelly assigns her to resume an old love affair with an ex-lover in order to spy on his scheming plans. In both films, the woman agrees to carry out this plan because she is in love with the hero. In “Notorious,” the hero loses respect for the woman after she does what he asks. The modern hero is too dishonorable to think of this.
Ebert said in his review, “Towne's contribution is quite skillful, especially if it's true, as I've heard, that he had to write around major f/x sequences which director John Woo had already written and fine-tuned.” His strategy is to make Ethan Hunt into a sympathetic yet one-dimensional character, so that motivation and emotion will not be a problem. He’s a cousin of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name – a hero defined not by his values but his actions.
The villain stays in the traditional Bond way: A megalomaniac who wants power or wealth by holding the world payment. In this film, he wants control of a deadly virus, but the virus is what Hitchcock called a MacGuffin. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it will make everyone want it or fear it. Here’s the clever part: the movie only explains little on the details, but smart in the way it uses the virus to create time pressure. An entire day after you’ve been exposed to the virus, you die, and that brings to a showdown right on time which consists of the hero, the villain, the woman the hero loves, the virus, and a ticking clock.
Thandie Newton plays the heroine, and the most significant thing about her character is that she remains alive at the end of the movie, quite possibly so that she can be available for the sequel. Ebert complains, “The Bond girls have had a depressing mortality rate over the years, but remember that 007 was formed in the promiscuous 1960s,” but if you look at Ethan Hunt, he lives in a time where even spies seem to remain in old relationships, maybe because it’s hard to start a new one.
Newton’s character is unique in the sense she plays a key role in the plot, taking her own plan. Ebert says, “Bond girls, even those with formidable fighting skills, were instruments of the plot.” Newton’s Nyah Hall not only requires a name that is pun, but surprisingly makes a one-sided decision that influences the ending of the movie. The playing field will be more level in the “Mission: Impossible” battle of the genders.
For Tom Cruise, this series is a franchise, similar to Mel Gibson in the “Lethal Weapon” franchise. “Mission: Impossible 3” was already starting to get planned, with the great action director, John Woo as the director, and there’s no reason why Tom Cruise could not continue as long as Tom Cruise can still star in the action scenes (or computer-generated parts). This is good for Cruise. By more or less guaranteeing his box office power, it gives him the ability to try out with more offbeat decisions like “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia.”
As for the movie itself: If the first movie was entertaining as sound, rage and movement, this one is more evolved, more confident, more sure-footed in the sense it marries small character development to flawless action. It is a global movie, flying no flag, requiring little dialogue, featuring characters who, as Ebert says, “are Pavlovian in their motivation.” Ebert also says, “It's more efficient than the Bond pictures, but not as much pure fun. But in this new century, I have a premonition we'll be seeing more efficiency and less fun in a lot of different areas.” The movement started around the time when college students decided management was hotter than literature.
How did “Mission: Impossible 3” turn out? Stay tuned next week to find out what I thought of it.
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