May issue - Magazine - Page 27
Glenside
News
GlensideNews@mail.com
ENTERTAINMENT
CINEMA & TV REVIEWS
By David Taylor
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
(Cert 12A) is out in cinemas
If Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning was almost
ridiculously fast-paced, rushing breathlessly from one
action set piece to another, its concluding half, The Final
Reckoning, is much more methodical. The first hour is
exposition-heavy, not only delineating what's at stake as
the malevolent Entity AI begins seizing control of the
world's nuclear stockpiles, but also cleverly drawing
together plot threads stretching back to the earlier MI
movies (most critically, Mission Impossible III). That still
leaves almost two hours of the sort of elaborate action
sequences and insane stunt work that has become the
hallmark of the series. If the film has a fault, it's that it
introduces a subplot about a suicide cult, the Children of
the Atom who worship the Entity, then doesn't really do
anything with it.
Although the sequence involving Tom Cruise hanging
from the wing of a biplane in mid-flight has drawn the
most pre-publicity, for my money the most nerveshredding sequence is the one aboard the sunken
submarine Sebastopol, which combines claustrophobia
with which-way-is-up disorientation. So is this the last
hurrah for the Impossible Mission Force, as its title
suggests? Well, the ending doesn't quite slam the door
shut on the series, just leaves it slightly ajar.
Fountain of Youth
(Cert 12A) is streaming on Apple TV
With an A-list cast (John Krasinski, Natalie Portman,
Domhnall Gleeson, Stanley Tucci, Eiza Gonzalez,
Carmen Ejogo) flitting from Britain to Thailand to Rome
to Vienna to Egypt it's obvious that a lot of money has
been thrown at Fountain of Youth. To be honest, there
would have been more entertainment value in watching
the cash being tossed in a hole in the ground and set
alight. It's hard to know where to apportion blame for this
dismal Indiana Jones knock-off about the search for… ah,
you're way ahead of me. Every line of dialogue sounds
like it was written by an AI programme, while the actors
struggle to make noises that even vaguely resemble
coherent human speech. Meanwhile, director Guy Richie
stages the action scenes as if he were in a different
country to the cast and crew, sitting in his garden
muttering instructions into his phone: “Big explosion.
Lots of shooting. Hugs all round.” For a film about the
secret of eternal life it makes you pray for an early death.
Lilo & Stitch (Cert U) is out in cinemas
Kudos to Hannah Waddingham's agent, who not only
managed to score her a neat guest appearance as the
commander of the aircraft carrier USS George W Bush in
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, but also the
role of the imperious Grand Councilwoman in this
month's other big cinema release, Lilo & Stitch. A live
action sci-fi comedy that is basically just a scene-by-scene
remake of the beloved 2002 animated classic, it is the
very definition of 'inessential'. But if it doesn't do
anything particularly groundbreaking with the material,
neither does it dishonour the original.
Thunderbolts* (Cert 12A) is out in cinemas
Although Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts* is marketing
itself as a snarky, anarchic spoof of superhero movies a la
rival DC Comics' The Suicide Squad, this punk attitude
only lasts as long as the opening action sequence, a PGrated rehash of the infamous corridor fight in the brutal
South Korean thriller Oldboy. Thereafter the
screenwriters adhere rigidly to the increasingly threadbare
Marvel template of mismatched superheroes trading
laboured quips as they battle a planet-destroying
supervillain while being undermined by self-serving
CONTINUED OVERPAGE
Page 27
