Desi Train

After coming out from watching 2 hours of visual effects of flying machines crashing, multiple explosions, a hundred chases, few lovey dovey scenes, menacingly looking at the camera - both heroes and villains, and a sinus pressured headache, I entered a Sushi restaurant.

I ordered a mix plate of Spicy Tuna Roll, Shrimp Roll and Crab Roll. I sat on my table. My order arrived. The uncooked fish surrounded by boiled rice. I looked at the food and then I slammed my face into the sushi. I took my head out. Some tuna, a broken shrimp tail, wasabi and some ginger with grain of rice were stuck all over my face.

I slammed my face back into the plate. This time I rubbed my face into the food. The restaurant servers rushed to my table. The South Korean Waitress now resigned to acting like Japanese for the rest of life looked at me with concern “Sirrrrr, Ore uuuu Okeey?”

I looked up at her and realized what I had done. The meaning of my actions just dawned on me. I had been a fool. Why would I do such a stupid thing? I should have first made an announcement in the restaurant over what I was about to do and then should have gone through my act.

Now everyone was simply shocked, courtesy yours truly. How would they understand what I had done? For they had not suffered the pain and anguish for 2 hours. How would they understand the intense desire on my part to feel sane, normal again? To feel the “real world” that I mercifully live in rather than the one woven by Mr. Cruise and company in their latest venture of Mission Impossible.

Flashback to 1996 when I was immensely enjoying watching the Brian De Palma directed Mission Impossible. A movie which went through a number of changes in the writers and the screenplay. Such was De Palma’s and the then Cruise’s focus to get the product right that they would not begin till they had produced a gripping, spellbinding screenplay.

And I fell in love with the characters. Ethan Hunt, Claire Phelps, Eugene Kittridge, Franz Krieger, Luther Stickell among others besides ofcourse the slimy Max.

MI 1 kept the right balance of the cerebral and the action plus the stunts. You went “Wow” when the masks were taken off to reveal the real faces behind it, the camera worn in glasses and ofcourse the mouth watering action scenes two of which come right in front of my eyes: The aquarium blow out in the restaurant with Cruise jumping out and the water and fish exploding behind him and ofcourse the helicopter chasing the train in the tunnel.

MI 2, simply put, was a disaster for me. This is not what Ethan Hunt was supposed to be. Not after how they defined him in MI 1. MI and John Woo (MI 2’s director) weren’t just meant to be together. They were the odd couple who would break up and divorce after 5 hours of marriage.

John Woo had turned Ethan Hunt into a Rambo, Jackie Chan, James Bond mixed juice punch, that gave you nothing but indigestion.

Director J.J.Abrams, the director of M:I 3, just gave the car a bit of a push… to see it crash down into the ravines. The car that was left hanging on the cliff by Mr. Woo.

How could an entire team, every thinking person that was ever associated with the MI series in the last 10 years make such a stupid idiotic error? They had a gold mine when they came out with MI 1. Sadly they just pissed on their treasure and left with 2 & now 3.

If you think idiots exist only in Bollywood, please welcome the new breed of pinheads Hollywood has put in direct competition to the knuckleheads in Bollywood.

The story is executed by Abrams, textbook-hook-you-style. A part of the climax is what the movie begins with and a bang and the opening credits roll in. Flashback to Hunt having a party with his fiancée, friends and family. Love and the “Awww what a guy” thingy is attempted to be established. Phone call. Ethan’s favourite student at the IMF has disappeared. Rescue Mission.

Enter the man who was simply brilliant in Capote, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman is the bad guy, Owen Davian, who sells arms and bombs and what not to I don’t even care about it anymore. Needless to say all of Ethan’s problems are due to Mr. Davian. Cat and mouse game follows. Reason for more effects, more stunts, more blowing up of bridges, cars, buildings and the cells in your brain which were made for the sole purpose of “thinking”. They are all blown up.

This is a bad trend. When stars have the power to give quality, thinking cinema, they should use that power to do just that. Instead stars are more and more enveloped in the tattered blanket of insecurity, thereby playing it safe each time, every time to give us nothing but stupid, horrendous products watched umpteen times before. The pattern is the same. Be it Hollywood or Bollywood.

Characters are reduced to tongue in one-liners which are supposed to make the audience smile and clap. Except for the constant kicking of the seats by a bratty teenager in the hall, I failed to hear any other sound.

Abrams and Cruise mess this one up royally, with scenes which leave you embarrassed or with a mocking smile. Cruise, the always dependable one hams throughout the emotional scenes. His explanations to his fiancée about his going out on a secret mission, the pleading to Hoffman while tied to the chair and worst of all the entire part where the electric (or whatever) capsule in Cruise’s head starts to play hokey.

Really, were they expecting that we would be gulping this down without batting an eyelid?

This mission is getting more and more impossible to drive to and watch.

C Plus. You are much better off slamming your face in a sushi plate and having a Korean converted to Japanese waitress using a warm towel to wipe away the food on your face and insanity in your brain injected by this Cruise product.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Filed under Movie Reactions, Movies, TV etc.
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