MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

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How the mighty have slipped.

"Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" doesn't bode well for "Part Two."

With more plot holes than a colander, "Dead Reckoning" blows its bloated budget with a seemingly AI generated script that constantly repeats itself, as if to put a fine point on its manifold shortcomings.

Spectacle replaces storytelling.

This film's budget could have fed the people of Nicaragua for a couple of years.

So much for Nicaragua.

An extended pre-credit submarine sequence lays the groundwork for a silly McGuffin involving a pair of fancy keys that, when locked together, enable entry to an advanced AI system that threatens to take control of all humanity before you can sneeze.

Tricky mask disguises pulled from the original '60s era television series, that gave the movie franchise its basis, make for some fun character reversals.

Entertaining too are good old fashioned suspense sequences involving car chases, and a speeding Orient Express train that experiences serious problems with gravity involving a missing bridge.

Watch out for falling pianos.

Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt doesn't interact in person with his team much. He's too busy running a maze of plot points that necessarily involve jumping, flying, and falling.

"Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" is a fine excuse to sit in an air conditioned movie theater for a few hours in the midst of summer, but it's not as good as any of the franchise's predecessors.

Hopefully, the filmmakers have already shot part two of "Dead Reckoning" because Tom Cruise doesn't look like he'll have enough gas in the tank for anymore additions to this flailing spy thriller franchise.

Baked, battered, and fried; stick a fork in it. It's all uphill from here.

Rated PG-13. 163 mins.

 

THE REVENANT

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SMART NEW MEDIA PRESENTS

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America’s snow-covered 19th century wilderness is the primary antagonist in director/co-screenwriter Alejandro González Iñárritu’s wildly ambitious adaptation of a novel by Michael Punke.

While the film has its flaws (it runs long at 156 minutes yet the ending feels rushed) Leonardo DiCaprio’s virtuosic (largely silent) performance goes hand-in-glove with the story’s brutal snowy set pieces.

One such sequence, about a bear mauling, has Iñárritu using state-of-the-art filmic technology to create a startling depiction of violent reality. The visceral result is unlike anything you've seen before. This is hold-onto-your-seat scary stuff. Iñárritu’s regular cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki frames the almost exclusively outdoor action with a poetic visual sensibility.

Survival and revenge make for a marathon storyline that follows a shrinking band of fur-trappers led by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass character. Native American tribes launch repeated attacks against the white men who kill them, their animals, and steal their land. The year is 1823 in the territories now divided into the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska. Glass is a different type of interloper. He lives in the territory with his Arikara Native American wife and their son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck). Caught between two worlds, Hugh Glass presents a walking contradiction, and not an entirely sympathetic protagonist.

Glass achieves “animated corpse” status after being twice mauled by a mother-bear.

Tom Hardy’s opportunist trapper Jon Fitzgerald is hired to stay behind and look after Glass, alongside Hawk and another trapper. Needless to say, Fitzgerald has plans of his own that don’t involve playing wilderness nurse to Glass, whom he abandons. But Hugh Glass proves tougher than nails when left alone to survive in the harsh elements with revenge on his mind.

“The Revenant” works better as a survival adventure story than it does than a revenge fantasy. The cautionary aspect of chasing revenge gets mitigated in a violent climax undermined by a pat element involving the Arikara tribe. That said, this is big-screen spectacle with plenty of heart and flesh at stake. Not since Kevin Macdonald’s “Touching the Void” has a film made its audience feel so cold and desperate. Dress warmly.

Rated R. 153 minutes. 

HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS

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“Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” could be a poster-movie for the exact type of gratuitously gun-heavy Hollywood flick that is being blamed for planting seeds of violence in young viewers.

Bearing no resemblance to the Brothers Grimm fairy tale alluded to in its title, the R-rated movie is nothing more than an excuse for a series of barely connected fight and battle scenes than include numerous decapitations, exploding bodies, and plenty of guns being fired in the name of killing witches. Yawn. Writer-director Tommy Wirkola’s pitiful excuse for a script frequently makes continuity-breaking leaps that show no regard for the audience. Not even the least amount of disbelief suspension is maintained.

Most disconcerting is Jeremy Renner’s participation in a movie that sends his rising-star-career crashing down to a subterranean depth. Although set in medieval times, the movie is besieged with silly modern slang and weapons more befitting a 19th century spaghetti western. The Steampunk presentation is a travesty of clashing styles.

Renner and co-star Gemma Arterton play grown-up versions of the fabled kids that killed their candy-house captor, an evil witch who intended on eating them. Immune to witch spells for some mumbled reason, the bloodthirsty siblings travel between “shitty little towns” saving falsely accused witches, and killing off actual female practitioners of the dark arts.

A friendly CGI troll named Edward comes to Gretel’s rescue during a period when she is inexplicably separated from her badass brother. One-dimensional supporting efforts from Peter Stormare — as a slimy sheriff, and Famke Janssen — as the biggest and baddest witch of them all, just add insult to this awful film.

Rated R. 100 mins.

ZERO STARS