6. “The Last Samurai”
Handsomely shot, well researched and deeply respectful (to a fault) of the waning samurai culture it details, Ed Zwick’s “The Last Samurai” would have a shot at actual greatness if the overt liberal Western guilt of its premise wasn’t so consistently undercut by the centrality of the West’s biggest movie star, Tom Cruise. As it is, it’s kind of a guilty pleasure, we have to say, and from its epic battle scenes to the loving recreation of (a particularly rose-tinted view of) Samurai village culture, the whiff of romanticized Orientalism is unavoidable, but seductive in its own right. And Cruise does play a less overtly heroic hero, starting off as an alcoholic soldier broken by his participation in the annihilation of one indigenous population (the American Indian tribe he and his regiment slaughtered during the Indian Wars) only to find himself in the crosshairs of a new conflict between traditionalism and modernity in Japan as the ancient Samurai culture comes under threat from Western sympathizers within Japan’s ruling elite. Zwick has made this kind of politically unsubtle but broadly effective work his stock in trade (see also “Glory” and “Blood Diamond”) but here the trappings are rich and evocative and the supporting performances, especially from Ken Watanabe as the impossibly noble Samurai leader, are really quite moving in their evocation of the end of an era. Surprisingly perhaps, the film actually did better in Japan than in the U.S. despite, or maybe because of, its not-exactly nuanced portrayal of the samurai as wholly honorable, peace-loving types (homegrown greats like Akira Kurosawa never presented them as so wholly pure and decent) and Western influence as pernicious and corrupting. And the paint-by numbers approach, with Cruise’s officer finding peace and community within this rigid but beautiful culture really does work … right up until the film’s closing moments, when we start to suspect that we’re supposed to infer that in fact it’s Cruise and not Watanabe who is the titular Last Samurai, and we become horrified at how much we’ve been taken in all over again. Still, there’s a pretty spectacular ninjas vs samurai battle, and Cruise acquits himself very well in the fight scenes.
What Does Cruise Jump Off And How High Is It? Nothing. In fact nothing can indicate better how much this is an inversion of the Cruise formula (he’s on the losing side, after all) than by pointing out that not only does he not jump from anything this time out, he and the villagers in fact get jumped on by that horde of stealthy ninjas descending from rooftops as is their sneaky wont.
5. “Mission: Impossible III”
The workhorse of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, ‘III’ basically did what it needed to in terms of erasing the bad memories left by the bloated, overblown and damn silly second installment, and reestablishing the series on a firmer footing, but even at the time it felt oddly minor. Despite the quality presence of Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain Owen Davian whom he plays as a reptilian creature of pure malevolence, and a terrific cameo from Keri Russell whose early death gives the film easily its most memorable moment, a lot of ‘III’ feels mechanical—efficient rather than particularly inspired. Part of the problem was a lack of chemistry between the central team this time out (to be fair, Jonathan Rhys Myers and Maggie Q are given absolutely zero personality to work with above ”dude who drives things” and “hot woman who occasionally kicks ass” respectively), but perhaps the place the stretchmarks show most is in the narrow scope of the storytelling. Partly because of the undefined nature of the big threat, and partly down to the focus instead on the personal stakes for Ethan, the film feels relentlessly small-screen. And with good reason. This was JJ Abrams‘ first feature film outing, and a lot of the plot turns and even the shooting style seem directly lifted from his successful TV spy series “Alias,” right down to the daft maguffin at the heart of it all (the “Rabbit’s Foot” whose actual function is never revealed) and the introduction of two characters (played by Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup) whose potential double-crosses don’t hold much interest for us as we’ve never seen them before and have no investment in their backstories. Add to that Davian’s immensely anticlimactic death (hit by a car? really?) a whole Vatican heist bit that we’d completely forgotten about (seriously, how can a heist in the Vatican be so unmemorable?) and an ending so cheesily domestic (aww, he gets to introduce wifey to his work pals like a normal guy) it might as well freeze frame on them all mid-laugh, and you get a package that gets the job done but with nowhere near the style and wit of the first and fourth installments.
What Does Cruise Jump Off And How High Is It? Somewhat prefiguring the already classic Burj Khalifa moment in ‘Ghost Protocol’ ‘M:I3’ sees Cruise’s Ethan Hunt forced to attempt ingress into a Shanghai skyscraper via its glass-topped roof. Which he can only access by swinging onto from a taller building nearby. And later he has to base-jump out of it, natch. Like much of the film, it’s a solid sequence that simply is blasted into forgettability by the superiority of the next film in the series.
4. “Mission: Impossible”
For better or worse, Brian de Palma set up, with this first installment, the essential recipe for the “Mission: Impossible” franchise: take a generous helping of tortuous plotting, add a splash of inevitable high-level betrayal, a sprinkling of memorable action, throw in a couple of people-wearing-masks-of-other-people, a soupcon of romantic intrigue, a dollop of criminal mastermind hellbent on world domination and season liberally with Tom Cruise. But it has to be said that this first time out the souffle rose, and the film came out a stylish, glossy package that still contains, in the Langley sequence and the train-pursued-by-a-helicopter-through-the-channel-tunnel, two of the franchise’s, and possibly even the genre’s silliest yet best sequences. What de Palma did so gracefully here was control the tone of the endeavor so that no matter how breathlessly perilous a stunt sequence may be, there’s always time for the tiny detail, which can itself then become a thrill (like the bead of sweat falling oh so slowly toward a pressure-sensitive floor) or the cathartic laugh (the fainting driver of the high speed train) which keeps everything squarely in the fun zone, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Helped by strong support despite underwritten roles from Jon Voight, Vanessa Redgrave, Jean Reno, Emmannuelle Beart and Ving Rhames, and aided by Cruise really seeming in his natural element in the many action scenes, de Palma made it look as easy as falling off a log, but it wouldn’t be until the fourth installment that a director would again be able to satisfyingly capture the mixture of high-stakes action and sheer entertainment value. So safe to say, while the film tends to be regarded as a minor de Palma, and certainly the script does thud and clang along (its best sequences are dialogue-free) it deserves a little more respect than that, especially in the pantheon of Tom Cruise action movies.
What Does Cruise Jump Off And How High Is It? Well, it’s not particularly high, but the ceiling of the white room in CIA headquarters from which Ethan Hunt has to descend noiselessly in order to steal a computer file is a metaphorical high watermark in Cruise’s action career so deserves special mention here. The terrifically well-shot, dialogue-free sequence certainly ranks among the most visually memorable and instantly iconic that the actor has ever been involved in.
