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The Passion of the Cruise
Given that Cruise acts as his own producer on this reactionary action franchise (with longtime partner Paula Wagner), it's no surprise that the original "team" concept of the 1960s TV series has been terminated with prejudice in favor of Cruise's blinding star ego. Should you decide to accept this movie, get used to the idea that it's all Tom Cruise, all the time. As his behind-the-camera team, Cruise brought onboard TV's Alias creators—director J.J. Abrams and writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Cruise's Ethan Hunt is now a budding family man with a new wife (Michelle Monaghan) who thinks he's a traffic analyst. Like any semi-retired superhero, Hunt can't resist when duty calls. He flies off to Germany once his boss (Billy Crudup) tells him that his protégé (Keri Russell) has been kidnapped. Most everything in M:I:III is an excuse for a spectacular, action-packed chase, starting with Hunt and company's surreal escape by helicopter through a white forest of Sequoia-sized wind generators. From his TV shows, Abrams imports a darker and paranoid tone, one of slippery identities and unexplained spasms of violence, even from Hunt's white knight. The root of the menace is Owen Davian (a slumming Philip Seymour Hoffman), a black-market arms dealer who's a tinny throwback to Goldfinger and the old Bond arch-villains. Abrams and his writers also mine the spy archives for a Hitchcockian McGuffin, namely a handheld doomsday weapon nicknamed the "Rabbit's Foot." But the apocalyptic conflict in M:I:III relies less on anything trivial like saving the world than it does on Ethan's choice between true love and his career. A vengeful sort, Davian kidnaps Hunt's unlucky new wife and demands the Rabbit's Foot as ransom. Backed up by the stalwart Luther (Ving Rhames), Ethan's interchangeable IMF A-team jumps into action, providing ground support and cheerleading. Frenetic, thrill-a-minute movies like this one are expressly programmed to keep audiences from asking questions. For instance, what in the name of St. Peter is Davian doing at a Vatican reception? Selling pirated copies of The Da Vinci Code? And why does Hunt have to break into the Vatican like a cat burglar and impersonate a priest, when he could have just walked in the front door like any other guest? Dissent in movie reviewing is almost as rare as it is in a White House news conference. As we see Tom run, and run, and run, you can't help wonder what makes Tom run. With the governoratorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cruise is now our leading cyborg movie star, a $60 million dollar man with a Scientology-implanted brain. While you're caught up in Abrams' array of stunts and slam-bang set pieces—topped by a fiery fighter-jet ambush—you're always reminded that Cruise is the hollow straw that stirs this drink. Like the aftermath of a supernova, this movie collapses around its star, leaving only a black hole from which no light escapes. To Abrams' credit, M:I:III takes longer than five seconds to self-destruct. If you synchronize watches, it's more like 60 minutes. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
Hard rain
India's loss is the cinema's gain. When Mehta recast the picture, she added Asian model-turned-actress Lisa Ray, who'd shine as a jewel in any crown. Yet there's another Ray that gives Water its crystal-clear appeal. In her story of the plight of untouchable Hindu widows, Mehta invokes the timeless style of Satyajit Ray, the revered Bengali director of Pather Panchali, The World of Apu and Devi. At its extreme, Hindu custom once allowed that widows could throw themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. Short of that, widows were cast adrift by their families and sent to ashrams where they donned white robes and lived liked lepers. If that sounds harsh, consider that many such "widows" were no more than children. Mehta grabs your attention with the heart-rending sight of 8-year-old Chuyia (Sarala) as she's subjected to the ritual. Shorn of her hair, she's shipped off to a widow house run by the iron-fisted Madhumati (Manorma). The beautiful Kalyani (Ray) is allowed to keep her locks—but only because she's the house's breadwinner prostitute. In its exposé of sexist oppression, Water runs deep but not silent. We in America today are partial to a concept of India as a nation of would-be Westerners who man (and woman) outsourced call centers. In some ways, the undertow of Hindu fundamentalism is just as strong as Muslim fundamentalism. The elemental constant in Mehta's symbolism is indeed water, which both cleanses and acts as a good omen—but also is a reminder of the brackish stagnancies of religion. The director fluidly transports her story to a mythic level with the entrance of Narayan (John Abraham), a wealthy law student and follower of Gandhi's nationalist reform movement. A less Hollywoodized version of Memories of a Geisha, Water ironically dilutes its power when Gandhi makes an appearance at a railroad station to rally his converts. In what should be a grand rhetorical crest, Gandhi's whistle-stop speech is over before it starts. Yet elsewhere, the humane and courageous clarity of Mehta's storytelling works on you like a hard spring rain. For the three generations of blackened widows represented by Chuyia, Kalyani and Madhumati, "Cry Me a River" isn't a song. It's a way of life—and death. Thomas Delapa reviews the latest movies on KUVO (FM 89.3) Fridays at 8:40 a.m. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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Evidently nothing's too impossible for superstar Tom Cruise,
either on or off the screen. He traded Nicole Kidman for Katie Holmes and a
bonus baby. Now Tom Terrific goes back to work as super-spy Ethan Hunt in
Mission: Impossible III, in which he's James Bond, Bruce Lee and Harry Houdini
all rolled into one. And the way Cruise reads lips, he might as well be
channeling Helen Keller, too.
Though writer/director Deepa Mehta's shimmering Water takes
place in 1938 India, its roiling religious issues flow all the way down to the
present. Not soon after Mehta began shooting her picture in 2000, Hindu
fundamentalist protests in the holy city of Varanasi forced the production to
shut down. It was only completed under a shroud of secrecy in Sri Lanka.
