Mission: Accomplished

I hate to do it, but here I’m again writing yet another movie review. Maybe some time I will get to write a real blog (and not a review). So anyways, here’s my review of the much awaited summer action thriller of the year: M:I-3.“What’s the matter, Mr. Hunt? You seem to be upset!”

“Katridge, you have never seen me upset”. (M:I-1)

That’s the point where our super spy Ethan Hunt set on a series of adventures in true sense. And M:I-3 proves that it hasn’t ended yet.And this time Ethan Hunt is more upset than ever (in the pre-credit sequence itself we see him enraged but helpless) and what else, it’s personal!

The Plot: (Warning!!! - The following paragraphs include spoilers.)
Ok. So it starts with our hero tied to a chair, and a white haired guy asking him for something called Rabbit’s Foot. Quite evidently he’s the bad guy who seems to be in a pretty bad mood and then we see a girl, all tied up, sitting in front of Ethan. She’s crying. Ethan is faced with a problem that our superheroes always face - the problem of singular choice. Either he has to give the location of Rabbit’s foot to the bad guy or lose the girl whom he calls “Jules”. But there’s a catch here. Ethan seems to think that he has already given the Rabbit’s foot to the bad guy. As such he’s confused and tries to buy some way out. But the bad guy is pretty mad and hell bent on hurting the girl. In the end the bad guy shoots the girl in the head and the credits sequence starts in the same way as the other two parts of the installment.

What follows is a long flashback, in which we come to know how Ethan ended in a situation like that. Agent Hunt has retired from field service, but still in active duty. So as his team mate Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) says “those who can’t do, teach”, he’s taken up a job to train fresh recruits. In addition to that he has found a nurse Julia (Michelle Monaghan) whom he loves immensely and planning to marry her and get settled. But on the night of his engagement party he gets a call from IMF Missions Director, Agent Musgrave (Billy Crudup), and comes to know that the first girl recruit Agent Farris (Keri Russell) that he ever recommended for an active field service has gone missing in Germany, while on a trail of a dangerous arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour-Hoffman). What follows is a high adrenaline action packed rescue mission that fails and agent Farris dies. Ethan’s boss Brassel (Lawrence Fishburne aka Morpheus) is quite unhappy in the way the mission is planned. Meanwhile Ethan receives a microdot sent by mail to him by agent Farris. Also the hard drives recovered from the unsuccessful mission point out to a transfer of something called Rabbit’s Foot at Vatican between unknown sellers and Davian. So Ethan and his team decide to kidnap Davian, fake his death, and recover the Rabbit’s foot, but not before Ethan and Julia marry.

Using the high tech equipment, as usual, for the deception, Ethan’s team pulls off the mission in Vatican. But Davian seems to be a cold blooded crazy villain. On the plane back he warns Ethan that he’s going to harm his girlfriend and then kill him in front of her. On the way from Airport to the IMF headquarters, Ethan learns from a message on Farris’ microdot that there’s a mole in IMF in the form of his boss Brassel. There’s an attack on the convoy, and Davian escapes. Ethan realizing that his wife’s life is in danger rushes to hospital where she works, just to find that she’s already kidnapped. He then receives a call from Davian who threatens to kill his wife in 48 hrs unless he get’s him the Rabbit’s foot. But at the same time IMF is after him on orders from Brassel. He’s arrested and then taken to the headquarters where he is helped by Agent Musgrave in escaping to Shanghai.

In Shanghai he meets his team and plans the operation to steal the rabbit’s foot from a tall skyscraper in Shanghai. The mission is a success with just 5 seconds remaining for the time limit of 48 hrs to get over. Ethan bids good bye to his team, and is taken to Davian’s safehouse somewhere in the city. That is where the flashback ends. And we see that Ethan is sitting next to his dead wife.Then comes the twist in the tale, where we see that the mole in IMF is not Brassel but Musgrave who helped Ethan run from the headquarters. It seems that he has been collaborating with Davian to get Rabbit’s foot and sell it to some Middle Eastern country, then collect enough intel to persuade the American Forces to invade that country, and install a puppet government - the usual conspiracy theory. Will Ethan find his way out of this situation and uncover the conspiracy? I'll let the movie answer these questions.
(The spoilers end here)

My Rating: 1.5/2

The Screenplay:

Hmm… So we have a pretty good storyboard here. I heard that Tom Cruise did not go ahead with the shooting until he was satisfied with the script, and I think it is a job well done. First of all, if you ever happened to watch the original TV series that aired on STAR World, Mission: Impossible was all about espionage, deception and hi-tech gadgets. Agreed there was some action, but out-and-out it was always a spy thriller to the core. And so was the first installment of the movie series, with a complicated plot and seemingly impossible heist at CIA, Langley. And it remains my personal favourite till date. Though many people would choose to disagree, second movie was all about style and only action, and very less espionage. A typical John Woo film and I didn’t like that movie very much. The third movie on the other hand is a good mixture of espionage and action.

Contrary to the other reviews, the mission does seem impossible.I have always loved the character of Ethan Hunt more than Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan or Ian Fleming’s James Bond or even xXx’s Xander Cage. (Wonder why super spies always have 4 alphabets surnames!!!) And thank God for getting him a new hairstyle than the one he had in M:I-2. That Ethan Hunt had looked too much flashy and too stylish like James Bond. In the latest installment he is back to what he is – being a spy. Good to see him do ‘lip-read”, pick out targets from moving vehicles, imitate voices and pick-locks using wires. These are the necessary attributes of a spy, right? Also they have tried to show a more personal side of him. I liked the way they have explained how the harnesses work, how the masks are created and how the voice simulators work. Many people don’t like this aspect of the series. But then again, whoever has seen the original TV series will agree to the fact that this is USP of the entire franchise. The gadgets and equipment used are cool, especially the super hi-tech remote controlled rapid fire guns, the remote detonators etc.

Also the final fight sequence with the villain is short and sweet, unlike boring and prolonged one in M:I-2. The villain is yet again an arms dealer. But he sure looks menacing and cold, remorseless, vicious, tough and crazy when compared to Max (Or Maxine as Ethan calls her playfully) from M:I-1 or Sean Ambrose from M:I-2. He is the toughest villain that Ethan Hunt has faced so far. The story writers have avoided the redundancy in the scene where Ethan enters a building from the top to recover the Rabbit’s Foot, a chemical formula that might be used to destroy the world. Since the scene being similar to the one in M:I-2, a clever move on the writers’ part, I must say.Though I must say that at the point where Musgrave lets Ethan escape from the IMF headquarters, I realized that he infact is the mole and not Brassel. So the twist in the end was not a big surprise for me.
My Rating: 2/2

The Action:

The film opens with a scene which looks inspired by the pre-credit sequence in Confidence. It is this sequence that makes you think –“Okay, we have got an edge-of-the-seat thriller at work over here." After all how many times have you seen the love interest of the main protagonist die in the first 5 minutes of the movie? The action never seems to go overboard and is quite believable. The first action sequence where Ethan goes to rescue Agent Farris gets your adrenaline pumping. But the most brilliantly shot one is the Bridge Ambush which reminds of True Lies and Clear and Present Danger. That is the point where I actually felt like the movie should never end. Not to forget the superb jump from the top of a skyscraper in Shanghai, of course.
My Rating: 1.75/2

The Trivia:

All three M:I movies involve recovering an artifact from a dangerous arms dealer.

All three movies have promotional posters with Ethan’s face’s side profile. The first two had Ethan facing right. The third one has Ethan facing left.

Like Jack Ryan’s girl friend and then wife, Ethan’s girl friend also is in medical profession.

The woman in red dress (Maggie Q) again provides distraction, very much like the one in Matrix.

Like Ronin, they have never explained in the movie what Rabbit’s Foot is.

The Performances:

Tom Cruise is brilliant as ever. The scenes worth noting are: Where Julia is confused about Ethan’s commitment to the relationship and he cannot tell her why and where he is going, is just too good.The first actual face to face interaction between Devian and Ethan on the plane back to US.The pre-credit sequence where he is totally helpless and enraged.

Lawrence Fishburne has a small role but made the best of it with a Morpheus like dialogue delivery. A few to be mentioned are:

“You can look at me with those incriminating eyes, but it is people like me who bleed on the flag to make sure that the stripes stay red.”

“Are you throwing a title at me Mr. Musgrave? I don’t give a damn if your father plays golf at the white house.”

“Mr. Musgrave, don’t interrupt me when I’m asking a rhetorical question.”

“It seems we have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

Oscar Winner Philip Seymour-Hoffman shows why he won an Oscar. His character of a complex and idiosyncratic real-life villain is a stark contrast from the washed up self indulgent best friend he played in Along Came Polly, or a stupid fabricator from The Jackal, or even the geek from Twister.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers who became famous as a semi-pro women’s football team coach in Bend It Like Beckham, and Maggie Q as a super-sexy spy do justice to their roles as Ethan’s new team-mates. Ving Rhames is more humorous in this installment, with all the advice he gives to Ethan for getting involved with a girl. Michelle Monaghan looks cute and plays a perfect damsel in distress.
My Rating: 1.5/2

The Music Score and Direction:

Some parts of the background score have been taken from the original soundtrack of the first installment that was never used in the movie. These music pieces are a kind of remix version of the original theme by Lalo Schiffrin. The music blends well with the drama unfolding on the screen and never seems to become a distraction. The Alias and Lost director J.J.Abrams has done a superb job in direction.
My Rating: 1.5/2

Total Rating: 8.25/10

So all in all it is a good movie. Though the International Box-Office figures tend to show a different story, it has got nothing to do with the actual movie. It is due to the declining fan base of Tom Cruise because of his so called heroics in electronic media. I have already seen it thrice and given a chance would see it again atleast twice. But then…. I’m a die hard Tom Cruise fan.

All the President's Men

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." These were the words from the inaugural address by the youngest elected president of the United States of America John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) in 1961. He was also the youngest one to die, still holding the office at the time of his death barely a couple of years after he became President; assassinated on November 22, 1963, at 12.35 pm, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas by a pro-communist who went by the name Lee Harvey Oswald.

Now, it is not a routine thing for a head of state to get assassinated, more so when it comes to the US of A. So you would think that this event would have created frenzy in the whole country. But surprisingly it was not true. The storm had calmed down even before it had begun. Call it the efficiency or inefficiency shown by Dallas Police Department (DPD) and the Federal agents who were able to nail down the assassin not through any kind of significant trail or leads, but only on suspicion, an hour after the assassination. The same department also managed to lose the sole thread of the whole case when an apparently infuriated JFK fan called Jack Ruby shot L. H. Oswald point blank inside the DPD headquarters, two days after the assassination, while he was being taken to a preliminary hearing at the Dallas Court. The case had ended even before it had begun. How convenient…how bloody convenient!!!

And this was the official version of the story. Now let’s have a look at it from other angle, an angle proposed by Jim Garrison, New Orleans District Attorney (DA) as a result of his investigation that he started in 1966. This investigation resulted into the filing of the only case on JFK assassination in a federal court. The subsequent rise to a conspiracy theory is the theme of the movie JFK by director and screen writer Oliver Stone, who is famous for his critically acclaimed and politically sensational trilogy on Vietnam War, the second among it being the Oscar winner Platoon.

So here are some of the minute details that were missed out in the Warren Commission, the official investigation carried out by White House, which stated that L.H.Oswald was the sole assassin in the case:

1. Lee was supposed to have used Mannlicher-Carcano Rifle, which was ordered by post. Now orders by post can be easily traced to the address of order and hence the owner of the rifle. But in 1961 any person could go to a gun shop and buy a rifle by producing a fake identity. So L.H.Oswald ordering the gun by post just does not sound smart enough.
2. This rifle was considered by many experts as a bad shoulder weapon to have. Now it is a presumed fact that three shots were fired from the weapon. Number One completely missed the President, the third was the fatal one which hit him in the head. The second bullet now widely known as the Magical Bullet hit him in the neck and then proceeded to create a total of seven wounds in JFK and in the Texas Governor John Connally who was sitting right next to him. In doing so this magic bullet traverses a zig-zag path at varied angles that defies the laws of physics.
3. One more interesting thing was that the time interval between the first and the third shot was 5.6 seconds. But when this rifle was tested by the best of the best snipers in the Bureau, it took them a full 7 seconds to fire three shots including the time to reload. Also the time interval between the second and third shot reports was very less in case of the shootout than what would have occurred for a normal reload time.
4. Any excellent sniper will accept the fact that the probability to get hit the target is highest for the first shot. But in this case, the third shot proved fatal. Considering this Lee had to be one master marksman, since he had to reload the gun twice and at the same time aim in just 5.6 seconds.
5. Check out the accompanying figures. It is very clear that if Oswald was sitting in the book depository to make the kill, it would have been easier for him to shoot JFK when he took the 90 degree turn toward the Dealey Plaza. But he did not do so. He waited for JFK's car to make the turn and head towards triple underpass, away from him. This is very absurd.

6. There were orders from high above from Pentagon to the Naval Office of Dallas for the security troops of the state to stand down on the day of assassination. The Naval Office assumed that the security task had been assigned to some other group, which clearly was not the case. This meant that the security in Dealey Plaza was at the minimal. Also the path chosen for the motorcade was a bizarre decision. At the end of the plaza, the car had to make a 120 degree turn, which made it go at a speed of around 10 miles per hour only making it very easy for the sniper to take a shot. JFK was a sitting duck.
7. There were no Nitrite traces found on Lee’s hands, meaning he did not even fire a single shot.
8. If it is to be assumed that Lee shot JFK, then the fatal shot came from behind JFK. If it is so, his head should have gone forward when the bullet hit him. But that day amongst the viewers at the road side there was an amateur video shooter called Zapruder who had shot the entire event in his video camera. The film captured by him shows that JFK’s head went back and towards left when the third bullet hit him, meaning this fatal bullet came from the front, most probably from grassy knoll in the secured parking lot. The Zapruder film shows some smoke coming from the grassy knoll area after the shooting.
9. The conspiracy theory states that there was a triangulated cross firing (Blue arrows in first figure, red arrows in second figure) by three teams of snipers and their co-ordinators in Dal-Tex building, Book depository and the parking lot.
10. Now Oswald was supposed to have defected to USSR and given vital information about US navy to KGB. But he came back after 4 years to US, and he wasn’t asked even a single question. Apparently he was a double agent for US. He was a trained agent of the Office of naval Intelleigence and remained so till the day he died.
11. The autopsy of JFK’s body was not done properly and the official medical reports were incomplete.
12. Many eye witnesses agreed to hear more than 4 shots and from different directions, but they were told to not tell this to anyone by the federal agents who took them into custody few minutes after the shooting. Surprisingly this was even before the assassin was apprehended.
13. Jack Ruby who shot Oswald was supposedly seen with Oswald on a number of occasions before the assassination.
14. The key witnesses died of sudden unexplained heart attacks or accidents.
15. And the best of all - The official investigator for Warren Commission was Allen Dulles, the former CIA director who had been fired from his post by JFK.


I don’t know when the US federal courts started accepting circumstantial evidence as a proof, but if anything is to go by in this case, L.H. Oswald did not even fire a single bullet and was a scapegoat of a wide spread conspiracy by the US Government and Security Services at the highest level. The other people who were involved were just involved because they did not know what they were doing under the pretext of “Orders”. And this is just the tip of the ice berg. If you want to know about this in detail, read the book “On the Trail of Assassins” by Jim Garrison or watch the movie JFK. It is simply mind numbing.

The persons who were supposed to have protected their president had conspired against him. One of the widely accepted reasons for this assassination was that JFK had gone soft on war issues. He wanted to end the cold war, the result of which was the withdrawal of support to anti-Castro groups and refusal to invade Cuba. He strongly believed that Vietnam and its problems should be left alone and he was a strong supporter of the civil rights to Afro-American community. He gave a sound backing to Martin Luther King’s movements, who by the way was also assassinated some time after JFK’s assassination. JFK’s brother Robert, whose career was also following the same political curve as that of JFK, was also assassinated during California elections. These were all the casualties of what we now call as the Military Industrial Complex. It states that the organizing principle of any society is to go for war. No war, no money. Due to this, there are large military establishments who are exercising strong unwarranted influence over the economics and politics of a democracy. So it was not a big surprise when all the changes proposed by JFK were rolled back along with the signing of the official document for the “Go Ahead” with Vietnam War, within four days of JFK’s assassination, by the new President Lyndon Johnson.

JFK did all that he could do for his country, for his people. He diverted the money spent on wars towards social and economic development. He wanted to bring in peace and end the moon race in favour of co-operation with USSR and in doing so he remained true to his words. He never asked anything in return from his country. But I am sure he never asked what he got on that fateful November ‘63 morning either. He was a true patriot, a martyr.

Paint Me Yellow...

Power packed, immense, relevant, at times funny and surprisingly refreshing........that’s how I can sum up Rang de Basanti.(RDB)
Now I am not an avid Hindi movie fan….. my sincere apologies to people who think that this makes me less Indian…. (I can’t help it, Hindi movies are boring and long, and in most cases I have already seen the Hollywood movies from which they are copied from!)…….
Last year I had been to movies like Shabd and Hulchul, and that’s when I said to myself, “That’s enough. No more Hindi movies”.

Surprisingly now, after a long gap, there I was buying tickets in advance for RDB.
Not because of the hype it created, but for the reviews that I heard.
And well I am happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed.

Well, the story lived up to its reputation. The performances have been power packed with some top notch acting by the not so famous actors. To me, except for Aamir Khan, the movie has no other superstar (meaning one who has given more than 5 hits in the lead role). Nevertheless there was no hint of overacting nor was there any instance where the emotions were flowing like a running tap. The humour never seemed to go overboard. In going with the current trend of Aamir Khan movies, his actress had to be a British one, and I found her to be better than the previous ones.

Music from A.R.Rehman, as always, was just too good. I find it hard to stop myself from singing the songs, especially the title track. The background score was equally good.

The story is very much relevant to the current political situation in the country.
Pardon me when I say that I don’t get inspired by hearing the stories of extraordinary courage and unmatched sacrifices that our freedom fighters have done so that their future generations, us, could enjoy the fruits of liberty. I am sorry, but what they did was relevant in their times, something that was inevitable. But that does not free us from our responsibilities, towards our nation, towards our fellow countrymen and towards ourselves. We, the representatives of a Corporate India, are so much engrossed in boasting about the strides that we have taken towards realizing the dream called India 2020, that we have forgotten the true message, “ A Country is never perfect, it has to be made perfect.
The society and the overall system will need reformations, and in order to do that we will have to get our own hands dirty”. But no one wants to do it. We imagine shaping the future of this country through the cozy confines of our air conditioned cubicles, trying to look at the world through the green tinged windows, much like the virtual reality of The Matrix.
But then we also have someone like the late Manjunath who come across from time to time to awaken us, to make us stand up to our principles, to remind us of our moral responsibilities. Why do we always need someone to inspire us to carry out our duties towards the nation? Shouldn’t it come natural? Agreed I said that our freedom fighters did something that was inevitable, but it must be taken into account that they didn’t need any stories of courage to get inspired, they were self motivated to achieve one and only goal – Total Independence. That’s what makes them great. Perhaps Manjunath had realized this, and it is high time we do too.


Back to the movie now…
The movie is refreshing in many ways:
The first that comes across is the juxtaposition of the events from the past and present. The editor’s skills have to be applauded here. A job well done.
The second is the kissing scenes. Finally there is some director who thinks that the Indian viewers is a matured lot. (I am sorry if there have already been instances in other movies, I missed them you see)
The third is the end….. It is not the usual vanilla ice-cream with chocolate sauce kind of ending…. Imagine the end of Kal Ho Na Ho, where Priety Zinta says that she loves only SRK and that she will remain unmarried for the rest of her life, no matter how much Saif loves her or the end of Dhoom, where John Abraham’s final plunge is not a leap to death, but to freedom. Like he drops into an ocean and gets away…. But no…. we audience always wanted those “Lived Happily Ever After” kind of ends.
Though I must say that was the only part of the movie which is flawed. For God’s sake, they are showing the NSGs, known popularly as Black Cats. They are the elite of the elite. They are to India as the Delta Ops are to US. So an action as irresponsible as the one shown in the movie is just too impossible to warrant a NSG action, especially when they are showing the whole event to be telecasted across the whole country. And one more thing that I must say here, you don’t have to be a martyr to bring out a radical change in the mindset of the people. Agreed Manjunath had to give up his life, but the circumstances were different. They won’t always be like that. In today’s world with powerful tools as the Media at your fingertips, it is very easy to put your point across. You just need to have the right thing in you.

Anyways, all in all a good movie.

The tagline of the movie says “A Generation Awakens”. It did in the movie, in reality though…I seriously doubt. Inspiring…. Maybe not, but thought provoking…definitely yes….
If I ever happen to be in a situation like the one in the movie, I wouldn’t pray for God to make things easier for me, I would just pray that my courage does not fade.

Regards
Gaurav S. Dandekar

P.S. : Please do not consider this as a review of the movie. These were just some of the thoughts that sprung into my mind after watching the movie.
So as my friend (and the editor of my first blog ever) Smiley puts it – Bouquets and Brickbats are most welcome.