Plane Films 2: Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation; Ted 2; American Sniper; Bridge of Spies; Kingsman

Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation

Though I watched the first Mission Impossible film and at least one other since, I can’t say the franchise inspires the same sort of excitement in me as…well, any other major franchise. And I didn’t even bother with the latest Bond.

Still, for plane fodder, Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation fit the bill nicely and was entertaining throughout. All I knew about it going in was that Tom Cruise had been made to look impressively youthful, Simon Pegg was now a major player and there was a bit with Tom Cruise holding onto the outside of an aircraft – which I’d seen in the poster in Shinjuku.

The film was a standard crime romp – our secret society comes up against another, more nefarious one and must work with a femme fatale to infiltrate various bases with ridiculous security set-ups until they uncover a plot that goes right to the top of the British Government.

One pleasant surprise was to see so much of the UK, made to look appropriately misty and intriguing, though having the ExCel Centre double as a train station was a little surreal. Otherwise the film was smoothly put-together and ticked all the usual boxes of fast action and near-misses and heroes that really should just get shot every few minutes and die. The extended road chase sequence was also very satisfying.

Ted 2

Ted surprised me by not being terrible, even though I’m no McFarlane fan. Ted 2 managed to do away with all the charm of the original and be the kind of awful film I expected the original to be. The pastiche of old Hollywood dance sequences was nice, and there were some funny moments when a fight breaks out in Comic-Con, but that was about it. The rest was strained running gags about porn, random pop culture references or the apparent conviction that people getting stoned is comedy gold in and of itself.

I liked Ted more than I expected to because it wasn’t like an extended episode of Family Guy. But Ted 2, sadly, was.

American Sniper

I remember complaints surfacing at the time when American Sniper came out – empty-headed patriotism, self-aggrandising tub-thumping from the American right, a film of pure propaganda. But I was curious, I enjoy Clint Eastwood’s direction and after all I like sniper films – it’s a little dated now but I’d say Enemy at the Gates is still amongst my top 5 war films.

American Sniper tells the story of Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in American military history, completing four tours in Iraq before ultimately being murdered on American soil. The film focuses not just on the action of his rivalry with an accomplished Syrian sniper and becoming a ‘legend’ in the forces, but on his trouble disassociating himself from the war when back home with his young family.

The performances here are very strong, especially Bradley Cooper’s, and the war is meticulously created. Yes, there is jingoism and patriotism here, and the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms always does seem a bit of an odd ritual to an outsider, but the main point is that Kyle is a good man, very protective of his country and often found himself faced with difficult moral decisions. Worth a watch.

Bridge of Spies

I don’t remember this film coming out, and watched it mostly because I was curious as to what Spielberg had been up to since War Horse (and dropping out of directing American Sniper). This is a more small-scale and less schmaltzy war film from him, much more along the lines of Argo. During the Cold War, James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) first finds himself defending a Soviet spy in court, eventually leading to tense exchange negotiations in Berlin just as the Wall is first built – an intriguing setpiece but not nearly as universally recognised as the battlefields of the world wars.

The performances here were strong, the pacing boiled slowly in the right sort of way, the historicity of it was engaging and the sympathy with which each side was treated was refreshing. Not a great classic, but enjoyable.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

I didn’t see Kingsman in the cinemas because the trailers and previews seemed annoying – though with remarkable fight choreography. Seeing the film in full, the parts I expected not to like I actually did, particularly Colin Firth as a stiff well-bred British secret agent and a general tests-at-the-academy middle act. The fights were also spectacular and uncompromisingly gory, with one extended fight scene remarkable in the level of detail involved.

But the problem was that the film’s main character and main bad guy didn’t quite work. Samuel L Jackson playing about could have worked if the film wasn’t already having trouble establishing whether it was a comedy or not, but as it was it jarred. And then the main character just didn’t seem to be pitched quite right – the idea was to show the chav with the heart of gold, the cheeky chappy prevailing, but the film never quite managed to show that the council estate kid with the short temper and foul mouth was just as capable, intelligent and – crucially – likeable as the gentleman. And I feel like having a teenager coming of age in the story rather than a young adult would have remedied that.

Still, excellent action setpieces, some very nice locations and a higher budget than I expected made this one enjoyable.