Tag: Henry Cavill

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Tom Cruise gets the gang back together for high octane excitement in Mission: Impossible Fallout

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Henry Cavill (August Walker), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn), Rebecca Ferguson (Ilsa Faust), Sean Harris (Solomon Lane), Angela Bassett (Erica Sloane), Michelle Monaghan (Julia Meade), Alec Baldwin (Alan Hunley), Vanessa Kirby (Alanna Mitsopolis/White Widow), Frederick Schmidt (Zola Mitsopolis), Wes Bentley (Patrick)

It’s probably not something many people would expect watching a Hollywood blockbuster, but part way through Mission: Impossible Fallout, as Tom Cruise motorbikes into a stream of traffic round the Champs-Élysées, I was reminded of Michael Crawford in Some Mother’s Do ‘Ave ‘Em. If there’s one thing these two have in common, it’s having a star willing to constantly go above and beyond to perform their own stunts. Which mainly makes you think as well that Crawford and Cruise are probably both a bit nuts.

Mission Impossible: Fallout picks up almost exactly where Rogue Nation left off. The villain of that film, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), may be in custody, but the remnants of his organisation have reformed as The Apostles, chosen a new leader (known only by the pseudonym John Lark), and are trying to seize three nuclear warheads. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is deployed to stop them. During the mission, Hunt chooses to save the lives of his team rather than complete the mission – leaving the IMF force with a race against time to regain the warheads, and leading to clashes and alliances with enemies and friends old and new, including Lane and Hunt’s female counterpart Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).

Mission: Impossible Fallout is big. By golly gosh it’s big. They aimed to make this the biggest and most stunt-filled, action-packed entry in the series – and they probably succeeded. More than any other film in the series, this one feels like a series of action sequences joined together by scenes of story and dialogue. Never has the overall aim of the villains, or their scheme, been so swiftly outlined – or essentially so inconsequential to the events we are watching. Do we need to know why the Apostles (an organisation we never even encounter in the flesh!) or Lane or any combination of the film’s baddies want to blow up three nuclear bombs in Kashmir? The film gambles that we won’t really care, that all we really care about is watching Hunt and co prevent them on a 15-minute deadline. It’s a gamble that the film more or less gets right.

The film also skims quickly, depending on you having seen the three preceding films so that it can spend time less on character re-establishment and more on those action scenes. It plays off emotions we have developed for the characters over previous episodes – and relies on us carrying across our knowledge of their past relationships. Alongside this, the film is crammed with callbacks to pretty much every film in the series – most prominently of all to Hunt’s marriage in the third film. This is a plot development, you feel, largely introduced to allow the characters to move on: it’s clear Hunt and Faust are the series intended romantic leads going forward (though Faust is never anything less than Hunt’s equal in all areas), so we need to know that Hunt isn’t cheating on a wife somewhere along the line, and that they have mutually decided to go their separate ways. The film accomplishes this – and also allows a few beats to suggest that, under the surface, all this Impossible Missioning has given Hunt the odd small emotional problem.

But not too many, as establishing Hunt’s decency is pretty central to the film. One of its themes is Hunt’s unwillingness to sacrifice any innocents or indeed anyone who doesn’t deserve it. This theme runs throughout the film, and is used to suggest that part of the reason Hunt so often instigates such insanely grandiose schemes is that he is completely unwilling to let the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few: give him the choice of sacrificing one man to get nuclear warheads easily, or jumping through the sorts of insane loops, schemes and dangers this film throws him into, and Hunt will choose the hard option every time. (Of course I could also be mean and say that Cruise has developed a character whose only real flaw is that he cares too much.)

At least this makes him really easy to root for. Which is just as well, as Fallout throws Hunt front and centre. Perhaps more so than any film since the second one, the team feels like a one-man army. Hunt does everything difficult or dangerous – which means Cruise is dragging himself to take on a number of insane stunts, from HALO jumps, to driving against the Parisian traffic, to hanging off the bottom of a flying helicopter. Of course, we also get no fewer than six speeches praising Hunt to the heavens – but when Cruise is willing to go such insane lengths (one stunt famously left him with a broken ankle and shut down filming for eight weeks) you can’t hold it against him that much.

And like all the rest of the series, this is a very fun film. It takes a while for the sense of fun to really kick in – much of the first half-hour feels deathly serious – but eventually that sense of fun, of enjoying the lunacy, settles in and you start to run with it. A madcap chase over the roofs and office blocks of London that ends at the Tate Gallery is a perfect example of a sequence that mixes hi-jinks, death-defying stunts and tongue in cheek humour. 

And that’s really the secret of this franchise. It’s a mix of absurdly OTT action, incredible dangers, and death-defying stunts that its star throws himself into with an insane abandon all played with a certain lightness of touch. The series, for all its world-endangering excitement and merciless villains, also has a family feeling behind it. Hunt’s team is his family and it’s that warmth which underpins all the drama. Fallout is huge fun – in fact, if it has any real flaws it is that it is too big by the end, with an action sequence that never seems to end – and a great rollercoaster to climb on board.

The Man From UNCLE (2015)

Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill try, and fail, to get some zing out of The Man From UNCLE

Director: Guy Richie

Cast: Henry Cavill (Napoleon Solo), Armie Hammer (Ilya Kuryakin), Alicia Vikander (Gaby Teller), Elizabeth Debicki (Victoria Vinciguerra), Jared Harris (Adrian Sanders), Hugh Grant (Alexander Waverly), Luca Calvani (Alexander Vinciguerra), Sylvester Groth (Uncle Rudi), Christian Berkel (Udo Teller), Misha Kuznetsov (Oleg)

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.was a 1960s TV spy caper series, which I confess I’ve never seen an episode of but I’m reliably told (by my wife who has) that it’s all larks and fun. This Guy Ritchie remake, on the other hand, is a tonal mess that has no idea what the hell it is. Only Hugh Grant gets anywhere near to appearing in a caper movie – probably because he’s virtually the only member of the cast who might have grown up watching the original series.

Anyway, in the early 1960s Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) is an international master-thief turned CIA agent (this suggests his character is a whole lot more fun than he actually is). Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) is a KGB super-agent, dealing with issues of psychosis (yup more fun to be had there). This odd couple are ordered to team up and work with car mechanic (no seriously) Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), whose father is working with renegade Italian fascists, led by femme fatale Victoria Viniciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki), to build a new nuclear mastery over the world. Or something.

It should be a ridiculous, overblown, mix of Bond and high 60s camp. Instead it’s dreary, chemistry-free, largely uninvolving sub-Mission: Impossible high jinks that I’m not ashamed to say I dozed off during at one point. Would that I had slept through more of it. It’s quite damning when the most enjoyable thing about it is thinking about the accent Olympics going on (we have a Brit playing an American, an American playing a Russian, a Swede playing a German, an Australian playing an Italian, an Irishman playing an American…).

No matter which way the three leads are arranged, Cavill, Vikander and Hammer have no chemistry at all in any combination. There is precisely zero bromance between the two leads. Vikander and Hammer have a will-they-won’t-they romance that comes from absolutely nowhere and leads nowhere (set up for sequels that will never come). Cavill looks the part, but completely lacks the cheeky, self-confident, “I’m-enjoying-all-this” charm that the part requires – instead he’s flat and boring. Hammer has more of the winking-at-the-camera cool, but he’s saddled with a part that frequently requires him to burst out in hotel-room-trashing outbursts of anger. Vikander just looks a bit bored with the whole thing.

These rather joyless characters go through a series of action set pieces, none of which got my pulse racing, and all of which felt like off cuts from a lousy Mission: Impossible sequel. Car chases, fisticuffs, gun fights, explosions, boat chases – they all tick by with no wit or pleasure involved anywhere. In these sort of things, you need to feel the characters are such adrenaline junkies that they sorta enjoy the crazy antics they get thrown into – you don’t get any of that from these three.

Much as I like Elizabeth Debicki, she can do little with her underwritten part – I mean I get that the plot isn’t the main thing in a film like this, but they could have at least given our villain a character. Instead she is as cardboard cut-out as the rest of the storyline. The acting from the bulk of the cast is also really odd – some seem aware they are in a tongue-in-cheek spy film, others seem to think they are in an espionage thriller. It’s a mess. There are scenes of pratfall comedy followed by grim scenes of torture and violence. In one juddering moment of this spy romp, the flipping Holocaust is dragged in as a shorthand for identifying a character as an “ultimate villain” – which given he had our hero strapped to a chair and was about to torture him, I think we could all have worked out without exploiting genocide. Anyone else think pulling this appalling real world event (with photos!) into a stupid caper movie is really tasteless? Did no one watch this thing while it was being edited?

I will say the design is pretty good and it’s well shot. But compare this to the fun and games of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films (which this is obviously trying to emulate) and the total lack of chemistry at its heart becomes immediately clear. Hugh Grant is a complete relief when he turns up as he’s the only actor who actually looks like he is enjoying his part and wants to be there. It was a big box office bomb and it’s no surprise. No one is having fun, the spirit of the original series seems to have been completely lost, and the lead actors totally fail to bring the leading-man pizzazz the film needs. Perfect if you want a nap.

The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

Guy Pearce and Jim Caviezel as friends turned foes in The Count of Monte Cristo

Director: Kevin Reynolds

Cast: Jim Caviezel (Edmond Dantès), Guy Pearce (Fernand Mondego), Dagmara Dominczyk (Mercedès Mondego), Luis Guzmán (Jacopo), Richard Harris (Abbè Faria), James Frain (JF Villefort), Michael Wincott (Armand Dorleac), Henry Cavill (Albert Mondego), Albie Woodington (Danglers), JB Blanc (Luigi Vampa), Alex Norton (Napoleon Bonaparte), Patrick Godfrey (Morrell), Freddie Jones (Colonel Villefort), Helen McCrory (Valentina Villefort)

Alexander Dumas’ novels are beasts. The Count of Monte Cristo is a real mountain of a book, a sprawling story of adventure and revenge. Kevin Reynolds’ film had a near impossible task to turn this into a film – most have gone down the route of adapting the book into a TV series – but triumphantly succeeds by locating in it a very clear, very filmic narrative.

In 1815, Edmond Dantès (Jim Caviezel) and Fernand Mondego (Guy Pearce) are young men serving on a merchant ship, who wash up on Elba where Napoleon (Alex Norton) is in exile. Tricked into taking a letter for Napoleon back to France, Dantès is betrayed by Mondego, who desires Dantès’ fiancée Mercedès (Dagmara Dominczyk) and resents his own envy for the far poorer Dantès. The corrupt magistrate Villefort (James Frain) colludes to protect his own family’s secrets, and Dantès is locked up in the dreaded Chateau d’If for 15 years, during which time he meets fellow prisoner Abbè Faria (Richard Harris) who teaches him politics, mathematics, philosophy and sword-fighting. Faria shares with Dantès the secret of the vast treasure he hid on the island of Monte Cristo – treasure Dantès dreams of using for his revenge.

This is actually a fairly nifty adaptation of a huge novel into something cinematic. Almost every change made to the original book ends up working extremely well – and adds an immediately understandable dramatic tension to it. I’d actually go so far as to say this might be a masterpiece of cinematic adaptation. The decision to make Dantès and Mondego childhood friends and rivals instantly adds a real frisson of betrayal to Mondego’s actions, as well as adding a very personal element to the revenge portion of the narrative. The simplification of the other “betrayers” also works extremely well, while the careful links throughout back to Dantès’ upbringing never let us forget the roots he has come from.

The script is also packed full of fun interjections. The idea of the chess piece, which Dantès and Mondego pass from one to the other, becomes laced with symbolism, while the changing of Jacopo into a sort of Brooklyn pirate works extremely well (Guizmán gets some of the best lines, but also gets to show a touching loyalty and concern for Dantès). On top of which, the pushing to the fore of the swashbuckling sword-fighting excitement sets us up for a cracking final sword fight between our two friends-turned-enemies. 

Reynolds also shoots the film extremely well with a host of interesting angles and framing devices showing how Dantès position and confidence change throughout the story. The film’s climactic sword fight is brilliantly staged and the film charges forward with a real momentum (there are of course no sword fights in the book!). 

Particularly well handled through is the sequence that is (in many ways) most faithful to the original book – Dantès’ time in the Chateau d’If. What I love in this sequence is that it’s a perfect combination of stuff from the book, Karate Kid style training, and some good old-fashioned warm character building. It’s also got two terrific performances from Michael Wincott as an almost comically dry sadistic guard and Richard Harris as the imprisoned Abbè Faria, the quintessential wise-old-mentor (the relationship between Faria and Dantès is beautifully judged).

The film perfectly balances its sense of fun and adventure with a very real-feeling story of a man who has to learn there is more to life than revenge. The plot that Dantès puts together probably isn’t the most complex piece of chicanery you are ever going to see, but it doesn’t really matter because the focus is the fun of the journey, and the thrill of someone being a few steps ahead of everyone else. 

Jim Caviezel is very good as Dantès, just the right blend of forthright moral strength and simmering resentment (few actors do stoic suffering better than Cavizel). There is a really nice questioning throughout the film of Dantès’ motives and whether revenge is really worth the candle, which adds a lovely depth to Cavizel’s performance.

But the film probably gets waltzed off by Guy Peace (who turned down the role of Dantès because he thought Mondego was more fun) who gets to campily simmer, sulk and fume at the edge of every scene. Mondego is brilliantly reinvented as a fearsomely proud, selfish, hedonistic aristocrat with a major inferiority complex, who takes everything from Dantès and still isn’t happy at the end of it. But Pearce has a whale of a time with his cruelty and resentment, and it’s a great reminder of how much he is (as an actor) in love with make-up, Mondego being scruffy, slightly pock-marked and increasingly bad of tooth.

He’s a villain you can scowl at and he’s a perfect counter-point for a hero whose emotional distance is designed to make him at times a difficult man to invest in. The film’s expansion of their personal relationship in its early section works really well, setting up the innate inequalities between them (wealth on one side, bravery and decency on the other) during the film’s cheeky and amusing opening sequence on Elba with Napoleon.

The Count of Monte Cristo is an extremely well structured, hugely entertaining adventure film. It’s very much like a 1930s swashbuckler, and every scene has some delightful moment that you’ll love. There are some very good performances in here as well, working with a very good conversion of this doorstop of a book into a film. Skilfully directed, interestingly shot, well acted – it’s a gem that’s far too overlooked.

Stardust (2007)

Claire Danes plays a star and Charlie Cox a village boy in charming adventure fairy-tale Stardust

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: Claire Danes (Yvaine), Charlie Cox (Tristan), Michelle Pfeiffer (Lamia), Mark Strong (Prince Septimus), Robert De Niro (Captain Shakespeare), Sienna Miller (Victoria Forester), Jason Flemyng (Prince Primus), Rupert Everett (Prince Secundus), Kate Magowan (Una), Ricky Gervais (Ferdy), Peter O’Toole (King of Stormhold), Joanna Scanlan (Mormo), Sarah Alexander (Empusa), Nathaniel Parker (Dunstan Thorn), Henry Cavill (Humphrey), Dexter Fletcher (Skinny Pirate), Ian McKellen (Narrator)

Stardust is loosely adapted from Neil Gaiman’s novel of the same name, an adult fairy tale refashioned into a crowd pleasing family film: a warm and genuine adventure story, stuffed with romance, excitement and drama.

Tristan (Charlie Cox) is a dreamy young man in the village of Wall, which neighbours the mystical and forbidden world of Stormhold. In love with the selfish Victoria (Sienna Miller), Tristan vows to travel to Stormhold and bring her back a fallen star. However, the star has landed in the form of a beautiful young woman, Yvaine (Claire Danes), and the two of them find themselves on a difficult journey to return to Wall. Along the way they must dodge the witch Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) who wishes to sacrifice Yvaine to regain her beauty, and the surviving sons of the late king of Stormhold, particularly the ruthless Septimus (Mark Strong), who need Yvaine’s necklace to claim the throne.

What works about Stardust is that it has an air of whimsy about it, without ever feeling whimsical or corny. It’s a grown-up fairy tale, in the sense that it has some black humour and acknowledgement of sex, but really it’s more of a charming adventure story in a fantasy setting, which manages to keep its tongue in its cheek and not take itself too seriously. Matthew Vaughn’s direction has a very light touch and never allows this soufflé of a film to either puff itself up too much, or to deflate. Instead it rolls along with a giddy charm, with a delightful odd-couple love story at the centre. It’s a film that totally gets its tone spot-on, helped by confident direction and a wonderful score.

Charlie Cox plays romantic lead Tristan with a great deal of charm and really captures the romance at his centre. He also manages that extremely difficult task of being likeable – you can’t help but warm to him despite the fact that his self-awareness is completely off for a large chunk of the film. Claire Danes is equally good as the prickly Yvaine, hiding a great capacity for emotion and longing under a defensive exterior. Their romance is of course highly traditional – they bicker because they love each other! – but both actors carry it off with a great deal of style. You can’t help but want them to get over their problems and get together.

The romantic plotline is also never overwhelmed by the faintly Pythonesque comedy that surrounds it, particularly from the ghostly chorus of deceased Princes of Stormhold. Vaughn produces a great cast of comic actors for this group, while entrusting Mark Strong with the lion’s share of the screentime as the dashing decoy antagonist. In fact, the construction of the film’s narrative is rather neatly done, as this plotline of the inheritance of Stormhold is largely kept separate narratively from the romantic Tristan/Yvaine storyline, with the intersections only occurring at key points.

The real antagonist of the film however is Michelle Pfeiffer’s witch Lamia, Pfeiffer offering a neat portrait of vanity intermixed with cruelty. It’s a very decent inversion of a “movie star” glamour performance, and Pfeiffer’s heartless ruthlessness is a very nice contrast with Tristan’s altruistic openness. In fact Pfeiffer is very good in this film: she gets the balance so right that Lamia constantly keeps you on your toes as to how villainous or not she may be. I’m not quite sure that the film quite manages to completely bring the two characters plot lines together to provide a really effective narrative drive to the film, but she certainly works as an effective antagonist.

The film’s structure is a combination shaggy dog story and classic quest structure, which allows each sequence to take on its tone and structure, from thriller to comedy, depending on the characters involved. What threads this together is the growing (and very sweetly structured) love story between Tristan and Yvain which keeps the momentum up as the film moves from location to location, with cameo roles sprinkled throughout, without the film losing momentum (though it is probably 15 minutes too long). The film’s comfort with letting it sequences expand is clear with Robert De Niro’s Captain Shakespeare, a feared cloud pirate whose secret desires are not so secret as he might think. The film delights in essentially extended jokes like this – but it gets away with it because these jokes manage to be quite funny (De Niro in particular turns in a very good comic performance).

It’s a film that manages to remain distinctive and original, while appealing to a wide audience, which is quite some trick to pull off. It also manages to do this without losing its distinctive rhythm, which is both endearing and enjoyable. The “rules” of its world are clearly established, and while many of the actors are slightly tongue in cheek, they never laugh at their characters but only gently tip the wink at the audience. This freedom largely comes from the conviction and honesty Danes and Cox endow the central characters with, to ground the film. It alsohas a great sense of emotional intelligence to it, and brings a lot of depth to the characters. It also helps that it’s brilliantly designed, looks ravishing and is full of several delightful performances.

There’s lots of terrific stuff in this film, with a very sweet story at its centre. In fact this sweetness is probably the secret of its success: it never takes itself very seriously, it dances lightly from scene to scene and never allows itself to become too overblown. It’s got a terrific cast and is well directed, with a snappy bounce. At moments it does feel a little long, and some sequences overstay their welcome a bit too much – but the central characters are so winningly played that you don’t really mind. Sure this is not a masterpiece, but it has a sort of magic about it, the charm, excitement, adventure and romance, all mixed together with such confidence that it’s a pleasure to watch.