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Reviews
Mission: Impossible (1996)
Confusion: Quite Possible
"Mission: Impossible" gained a reputation for being a sloppily unsolvable riddle of a film, full of so many holes and turnabouts and crossed loyalties that the viewer was left more irritated than perplexed. Watching it a second time with that in mind, what was surprising to me was that all the pieces of this puzzle fit together somehow...despite a few minor plot holes and improbabilities, the basic thrust of the film retains a certain logic and solvability. What's less surprising is how little this all matters. "Mission: Impossible" remains an average film dominated a few remarkable setpieces. The film moves rather impatiently and hurriedly through its scenes of intrigue and doublecrossing (the real source of so much audience confusion) in order to set up its action scenes. Cruise overplays with admirable confidence, but this remains a good action film, but a mediocre spy film.
Papillon (1973)
the dull side of freedom
The dubiously factual true story of Devil's Island prisoners attempting to break out, "Papillon" is concerned with the same themes of most prison films: freedom, humanity, the indestructible human spirit, etc.. All fine and good, as the glibly entertaining "The Shawshank Redemption" proved, but Franklin Schaffner's film is undone by narrative formlessness (the movie was made up as they went along and it shows), overlength, clumsy direction, and unforgivably hambone acting by Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. The half-baked brand of "visceral" showmanship displayed here would be done much better in "Midnight Express" and countless other superior prison films.