Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sit back and have fun

Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise

There is something ineffably pleasing about watching people doing the sort of thing for which they have a supreme talent. Messi playing football, for example, or Domingo singing, or Astaire dancing, are so good that the only appropriate response is often to smile in wonder.

To that list I would also add the sheer unadulterated pleasure of watching a big studio movie in which everyone is at the top of their game. It’s a perfect marriage of creativity, commerce, and primarily sheer entertainment. That may be why I spent most of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation with a smile on my face. As a piece of adventure movie-making it is ridiculously pleasing.

I know it is very easy taking pot shots at Tom Cruise and heaven knows I’ve done enough of that in my time, but as a movie star and leading man he has few equals. He is undoubtedly the biggest star in the world and, on screen at least, he wears it fairly lightly. I cannot think of another actor who could pull off the role of Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series with as much style or guile as Cruise.

There’s a moment near the start of this film where an impressionable young contact is slightly overawed at meeting Hunt. ‘You’re really him’, she says. Cruise’s non-verbal response is one of the many grace notes that he brings to the role he was born to play. It betokens a confidence that is shot through every aspect of this film.

Whether it is Christopher McQuarrie’s screenplay and direction, Robert Elswit’s superb cinematography, Eddie Hamilton’s cutting, or the immaculately constructed cast this is a film that is designed to thrill from first to last. Much has been made of Cruise strapped to a plane for the opening sequence, which you would need to have been living in a cave not to have seen, but this is possibly the least of the film’s spectacular set pieces. It is a mere amuse bouche for a menu of top quality mayhem.

I won’t dwell at length on the plot because it’s not really important. There’s a criminal organisation out to destroy the Impossible Missions Force, and a superbly sinister mastermind played by Sean Harris who may be the one man Hunt cannot beat. All of this is the frame on which to hang some superb action sequences.

The charm of the later entries in the Mission: Impossible series is their link to the spirit of the original TV show. The show was a product of the Sixties spy boom and ever since J.J. Abrams came on board the films have channelled the spirit of that show. At a time when Bond has gone for grim and gritty, Ethan Hunt and his cohort are having fun.

Where they have taken a leaf out of Bond’s book is in the use of what Ian Fleming referred to as ‘thrilling cities’. In their Sixties heyday when the world was a bigger place Bond films relished exotic locales and this film takes a leaf out of that book. Vienna and London are the backdrop for major action set pieces while Casablanca plays host to one of the best car/motorcycle chases in recent years.

Whatever the location we know that Ethan Hunt will always escape; no death trap is ever enough to finally put paid to him, and that is part of the fun. He is more than human but not quite superhuman; the scene after that thrilling car chase when Hunt attempts a Starsky and Hutch car bonnet slide is another of those grace notes that humanises the character.

What is extremely gratifying however is the way he is frequently unmanned by the latest member of the team, Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust. She is the sort of kick-ass heroine who makes the Avengers Natasha Romanoff seem positively matronly. She is the sort of strong female character we need to see in films like this and the story makes no concessions to her gender. We avoid the sort of shoehorning in of an unlikely romance and instead she and Hunt are respectful equals.

We are left in no doubt that these two might meet up again further down the road when Ethan and the IMF get back together. I for one can’t wait.

A legend in his own lunchtime...

I have a huge amount of respect for actors; I also have a huge amount of respect for film directors, and my admiration for actors who direct themselves is unbounded. This is the cinematic equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your stomach, but with the added pressure of risking millions of pounds of someone else’s money in the process.

Some actor-directors are very good; Clint Eastwood and Kenneth Branagh come to mind. Some are very bad; step forward Steven Seagal. Most come somewhere in the middle and the lower end of that category is pretty much where we find Robert Carlyle in his feature directing debut The Legend of Barney Thomson.

The kindest description of this alleged black comedy would be workmanlike. Carlyle takes the title role as a patter-challenged Glasgow barber who is being fired for his lack of bonhomie. An unfortunate accident during an argument ends up with his boss dead on the floor on the wrong end of Barney’s scissors.

It is at this point that the film does that thing that all poor films do and has people behave the way they only do in the movies. Barney proceeds on an elaborate and illogical train of actions involving hiding bodies, concocting alibis, and generally turning into an accidental serial killer. Given that the inept local police are already dealing unsuccessfully with a genuine serial killer it is inevitable that the two stories will collide, which they do with a dull thud.

Lurking in the background is Barney’s mother, played by Emma Thompson. The fact that there is only a two-year age gap between Thompson and Carlyle says a lot about this film. She proves surprisingly unshocked by Barney’s exploits but she has motives of her own.  The film spins out of control very quickly as the action and the performances become increasingly frantic and hysterical. The final shoot-out borders on pantomime.

But it does have its moments. Barney disposing of a body in the middle of a loch is genuinely comic and Thompson’s final speech is terrifyingly effective. Other than that the film misses the mark.

The performances are oddly out of sync. Carlyle, a fine actor, brings very little to Barney while Emma Thompson plainly wants to add to her gallery of stage and screen grotesques with her harpie-like turn as his mother. Ashley Jensen, Ray Winstone, Kevin Guthrie, and the unfortunate Tom Courtenay are similarly ill-served by a tin-eared script.

Sadly it’s the direction that disappoints most. Carlyle plainly loves Glasgow and the East End locations present a side of the city seldom seen on screen. But they are so uninteresting here. In the unfortunate recent traditions of Scottish cinema it is relentlessly uncinematic. Everything happens in the centre of the frame like no one ever heard of the rule of thirds; the over reliance on close-ups makes it all seem flat and you get the sense of the action simply happening rather than being guided by any intention.

In the end The Legend of Barney Thomson shows that Robert Carlyle can rub his stomach and pat his head; just not at the same time.

A tale to astonish...

It’s been a tough old time at the movies lately for those of us who are approaching what I choose to characterise as the new 40. Hollywood has been conducting a scorched earth attack on the treasures of our childhood and teenage years for most of the past decade.

The Lone Ranger, The Great Gatsby, Sherlock Holmes and Superman are just some of the icons that have been debased in recent years; my stomach heaves at the thought of my once-treasured Man from UNCLE in the hands of Guy Ritchie. I can’t help but have images of a gorilla juggling a Ming vase.

Imagine how I felt then as I sat nervously waiting for Ant-Man. A little context first. Tales to Astonish 42 was the first US comic I ever read back in 1962. I remember seeing the cover in the bookshop and thinking it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. It’s probably still in my top ten covers.

This was my gateway drug to a four-colour world which I have cheerfully inhabited for more than 50 years so I was apprehensive about how the Marvel Cinematic Universe would handle it. In fact not only do they do a good job, they actually treat the character with probably more respect than anyone else in the MCU.

Ant-Man is the story of Henry Pym (Michael Douglas), a scientist who has worked out how to alter the distance between atoms allowing things to shrink, and also grow. His invention could have changed the world but Pym, after a brief superhero career as Ant-Man, retired almost forty years before this story takes place. Instead his protégé Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has taken up the mantle but wants to weaponise the technology. When Pym realises what is at stake, briefed by his estranged daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), he recruits a hi-tech burglar, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), to use his original shrinking technology to break into Cross’s lab and steal the new tech.

This is an engaging, exciting, and often funny heist movie which acknowledges the Marvel Universe while existing on its fringes. At one point Lang suggests getting the Avengers to handle the job. The performances from all concerned are fine, the film moves along at a fair clip, and the effects are excellent especially in an astonishing performance by Michael Douglas in the prologue.

What I love about this film is the way it contextualises the Marvel Universe. Henry Pym is one of the foundation myths of Marvel. He and his shrinking technology make their first appearing in Tales to Astonish 27. His first appearance as Ant-Man is in Tales to Astonish 35. Well done incidentally for slipping the name of the comic into the script as one of several clever Easter Eggs in this movie.

Henry Pym and his ‘Pym particles’ are part of the core scientific tenets of Marvel, he’s a founder-member of The Avengers, yet we haven’t heard of him up till now. That always puzzled me but credit to this film for closing the loop. Pym was Ant-Man, just as in the comic books, but now – again as in the comic books – Scott Lang takes over the mantle. There’s actually a third Ant-Man but two is enough to be going on with at the moment.

This film does an excellent job of filling in Pym’s back story in a way which is not only credible to the specific narrative but also into the overarching narrative of the MCU. As we see here his absence until now makes perfect sense. 

There’s a lot of speculation about how this film might have turned out in the hands of the original writer-director Edgar Wright. He left close to the start of shooting and was replaced by Peyton Reed. I have no idea what went on but my suspicion is that Wright’s comic instincts may have seen Scott Lang as a figure of fun; there is a great tendency for Ant-Man to be seen as Marvel’s Aquaman. This film however suggests Marvel wanted one of the cornerstones of their universe to be treated with the respect his legacy deserves and I think they’ve done it rather well.

How real is unREAL?

Shiri Appleby (L) and Constance Zimmer in unREAL

Way back before the dawn of time – okay, 1979 – Robin Williams released his first comedy album. It was called Reality- What a Concept. If you want to hear it you can still find it on YouTube; it’s great, if a little dated. However even the mercurial mind of Robin Williams would have been blown by modern notions of reality; to paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, when we use reality now it means whatever we choose it to mean.

I was thinking of this as I was watching the first episode of unREAL, the latest behind the scenes glossy TV drama from Lifetime. The main aim of unREAL is to lift the lid on reality television in the sense of allowing some daylight in on the magic of constructed reality. Although it appears oxymoronic, constructed reality is exactly what it says. It is a version of life constructed by real people who are in effect playing themselves; life without the boring bits as Hitchcock once said of drama. The best examples in this country are shows like The Only Way is Essex or Made in Chelsea in which cameras are always on hand to record the feuds and fights of everyday folk.

unREAL is based on a short film called Sequin Raze, written and directed by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro which was itself inspired by her four years as a producer on The Bachelor. In that reality show, an eligible male is expected to choose a bride from a pool of around two dozen eligible women. If you’ve seen the show you might share my view that it is a sign that we are approaching the end of days; these women generally debase themselves in order to catch the eye of the hunk du jour. The hunk has all the power. He can make or break the rules on a whim, in an especially demeaning sequence eliminated women get to come back and plead for another chance. Think of Gladiator but with lip gloss and more pouting.

The Bachelor is a perfect example of constructed reality. The narrative unfolds at the whim of the showrunner; the Caesar of this digital Coliseum who gets to decide who lives or dies. Caesar also chooses who gets to play which roles; who is the psycho villain, who is the needy ingénue, who is going to be the audience favourite, who is going to be the butt of the jokes. It’s an awesome responsibility because all the while even Caesar is vulnerable, this electronic emperor lives or dies at the whim of the audience figures.

In unREAL, created by Shapiro, the show in question is called Everlasting which is to all intents and purposes, The Bachelor in disguise. The hunk here is a hotel tycoon who needs the publicity and the women are there to win his wallet, if not his heart. Caesar is the androgynously named Quinn King (Constance Zimmer), a producer who runs her world from a control booth with a walkie talkie and a will of iron, dispensing favour and cruelty in equal measure as she attempts to construct a romantic narrative for the benefit of the baying audience. Also here is Rachel, Maximus to Quinn’s Caesar. Rachel (Shiri Appleby) was the best in the business at getting the all-important sound bites even at the cost of destroying the contestants’ lives, but she flipped out on set in the last series and ruined the show. Rachael really knows how it works; like Fitzgerald’s Monroe Stahr in The Last Tycoon she has the whole equation in her head. Quinn needs Rachael but can Rachael be trusted? When we see her first she’s wearing a ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ T-shirt, so I’m guessing someone is in for a surprise.

On the basis of the first hour there is the usual backstage intrigue; old romances, simmering rivalries, the air of quiet desperation and barely suppressed panic. But what is interesting for me is how much daylight is allowed to intrude on the lengths they go to in order to manipulate the story, producers posing as extras to direct scenes from within for example. Or the quite naked exposure of commercial interests; the male star will only go on if one of his hotels is used as a location with a prominent shot of the exterior. And there we were thinking all of those close-ups of restaurants, spas and boutiques in Real Housewives were just because they were really good stores.

But even more interesting I think is that the audience won’t care. Rather like Matthew Lillard’s deconstruction of the slasher movie in Scream, the audience is being told all the way through how it is being gulled by shows like these. It’s like a magician explaining how the trick is done while it’s being done. But it doesn’t matter because it’s reality.

And it’s a big hit. What a concept.