Film REVIEWS
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ACTION MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE GHOST PROTOCOL (12A) 132mins ●●●●●
Pixar director Brad Bird makes the leap from animation to live action in spectacular fashion with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, a strong wow-factor entry into the franchise. As he did with The Incredibles and Ratatouille, Bird marries audacious action sequences with subtle, situation-appropriate humour while finding new ways to breathe fresh life into a fairly routine premise.
In plot terms, this Mission is a chase movie, with Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his new team of IMF comrades (Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton and Simon Pegg) blamed for an explosion at The Kremlin. They have to race against time to prevent the real culprit (Michael Nyqvist) from starting nuclear war.
Living up to expectations, the film’s big
action moments strike genre gold. An early prison break, set largely to Dean Martin’s ‘Ain’t That a Kick in the Head’, sets the template for the recurring combination of bruising fights with assured comic timing, set against pin- drop silent moments of tension.
Bird’s direction is so consistently thrilling it almost hides the movie’s flaws, which lie in the main characters’ lack of emotional complexity – the dark past between Cruise’s Hunt and Renner’s under-used Brandt, for example, is only lightly explored. A disappointing villain in Nyqvist and some dodgy CGI are the only two other negatives in what is otherwise a solid crowd pleaser. (Rob Carnevale) ■ General release from Mon 26 Dec.
THRILLER THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (18) 158mins ●●●●● SILENT CLASSIC THE ARTIST (PG) 100min ●●●●●
The Millenium books through the eyes of David Fincher – revenge thrillers don’t come with more high-powered credentials than that. While Steven Zaillian’s script sticks a little too closely to the novel’s labyrinthine plotting, Fincher amps up the dark poetry of the visuals to create an ugly, modern fable that’s considerably more potent than the Swedish version.
We all know the story by now: ageing patriarch Henrik Vanger (Christopher
Plummer) hires journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to look into the coldest possible case – the disappearance of Vanger’s great-niece, forty years earlier. To help him crack the case, Blomkvist enlists the help of gothy hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). Despite raising his game from some recent sub-par performances, Craig takes
second place to Rooney Mara, whose bitter, striking performance is a long way from her girl-next-door in The Social Network. Exuding a barely suppressed rage in every scene, Mara and Fincher elevate a populist novel into a compelling, if overlong drama of bleakness and corruption. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Mon 26 Dec.
The Artist has in-built appeal for movie buffs who believe that the arrival of talking pictures was one of the worst things that ever happened to an art form that had found a universal language in the visual poetry of the late silent era. The Artist doesn’t just embody an esoteric longing for a bygone age, it is a joyous, impeccably crafted crowdpleaser that melds the tried and tested plot of A Star is Born to the comic exuberance of Singin’ in the Rain. It is impossible not to fall for its charms. A labour of love for writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist is a black
and white, silent comedy set in the Hollywood of the late 1920s and early 1930s where swashbuckling matinee idol George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) finds his star fading just as ambitious extra Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) becomes the new sensation of the age. Dujardin has all the swaggering exuberance and conceit of Douglas Fairbanks, but he is also a deft physical comic and a pretty terrific tap dancer. Factor in a scene-stealing dog called Uggy and you have one of the most unexpectedly delightful films of the past year. (Allan Hunter) ■ General release from Fri 30 Dec.
15 Dec 2011–5 Jan 2012 THE LIST 83