With Pixar’s Brad Bird at the helm of this bustling live-action feature, the aging Tom Terrific tries to restore the covenant between a star and his fans
The producer of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol forced the star to perform some pretty hairy stunts. But since Tom Cruise is the producer (and star) of this fourth feature-film spinoff of the ’60s TV series, we can assume that he wanted to assert his limber muscularity as he approaches 50. So here he is, using gluey gloves to climb the glass façade of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, until he is 123 floors above certain death.
This reckless bravado, which must have tested the nerves of the movie’s insurers as much as it did Cruise’s, means to demonstrate the macho masochism — the machochism, if you will, or masochismo — of a true action star, as if he were the Douglas Fairbanks or Jackie Chan of today’s Hollywood. It could also be Cruise’s way of proving, to himself and his audience, that he can still scale any heights, in an Arab emirate or at the worldwide box office. And this, not the live-action directorial debut of Pixar’s Brad Bird or today’s sneaky five-day pre-release on 400 IMAX screens, is the real news of M:I 4 — the movie’s own subtextual cliffhanger.
This reckless bravado, which must have tested the nerves of the movie’s insurers as much as it did Cruise’s, means to demonstrate the macho masochism — the machochism, if you will, or masochismo — of a true action star, as if he were the Douglas Fairbanks or Jackie Chan of today’s Hollywood. It could also be Cruise’s way of proving, to himself and his audience, that he can still scale any heights, in an Arab emirate or at the worldwide box office. And this, not the live-action directorial debut of Pixar’s Brad Bird or today’s sneaky five-day pre-release on 400 IMAX screens, is the real news of M:I 4 — the movie’s own subtextual cliffhanger.
Author : RICHARD CORLISS