Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

This mission sees Ethan Hawke and his team try to clear their name after they are framed for bombing the Kremlin. As a result Ghost Protocol is initiated; which essentially means that IMF is shut down until the situation is resolved. Cue lots of stylish set pieces, high-tech gadgetry, slick subterfuge and Tom Cruise performing some unnecessary aerial acrobatics.

It is, however, all very entertaining. Director Brad Bird has made the transition from animation (probably best know for Up, Ratatouille and The Incredibles) to live action very well. He does nothing especially fancy, but is slick enough for this kind of film. The main cast are all given enough to do, and there is also time to flesh out Ethan's character a bit. As Ethan, Tom Cruise is in his element; and as someone who does all his own stunts, everything looks pretty spectacular. Maybe the MI series exists just to make Tom look good, but to be fair he does it justice. Good to see Simon Pegg out in the field, and not just to bring brevity to tense situations. Jeremy Renner is good but perhaps suffers from having to play second fiddle to Tom; still, they could have done a lot worse. He's even involved in Ethan's back-story. Paula Paxton is fairly kick-ass as the sexy Jane Carter and Michael Nyqvist as a fairly one dimensional baddie completes the main cast.

Overall, perhaps the most enjoyable film of the franchise, maybe only let down by a weak villain, but then most of the fun is had in tracking him down. Spectacular, intriguing, and clips along at a good pace despite its 133 minute run time.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

In true Hollywood style, as soon as a foreign film does well at the box office, a remake is scheduled so that the great unclean can watch a good story without having to expend any energy by reading subtitles. My initial reaction of “Oh FFS” was tempered when I heard that David Fincher was making the film, and I became intrigued upon hearing that Daniel Craig was to be playing Blomqvist. So it was that I eventually found myself looking forward to seeing the film when it was released.

The opening credits are tremendous. Very Bond-esque, there are lots of stylised tattoo-ink figures amongst other stuff, and the re-hashing of Led Zeppelin’s The Immigrant Song by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross fits really well.



Following all that, there is a general re-run of the original version, but in English. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very good film and I did enjoy it. It’s just, well, was it really worth doing? Rooney Mara is very good as Lisbeth Salander, though she’s almost a bit too pretty to be really gritty; there was just something about her face. Though she had obviously lost a lot of weight for the role her face was still too round and pretty. She’s certainly no Noomi Rapace who was just perfect, and Mara isn’t quite so brutal (though she has a mean swing with a golf club). Daniel Craig is also very good. He is the one thing I think is an improvement over the original. In the books Blomqvist is described as being quite a ladies man; however Michael Nyqvist in the original, has a face like a bag of spanners! Daniel Craig is definitely a better fit for this description, though he did spend a lot of the film wearing his glasses under his chin!

So, while I did enjoy the film I felt is didn’t offer much more than the original Swedish version. It wasn’t really a re-imagining, more a copy. The ending was changed slightly (if I remember correctly), but it’s of little significance. There is also quite an extended epilogue, I think spelling out what was more implied in the original; so those people who thought that Lord of the Rings had too many endings may be bored by this point. I didn’t think there were enough endings in LOTR so didn’t mind the epilogue. Overall it is a very good film, though perhaps redundant. If it ain't broke, don’t fix it.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

So, one of the reasons I think I enjoyed HP and the DH part 1 is because it had been quite a while since I read the book, and so I'd forgotten a good deal of it (not that it stopped me being a bit critical of it). However, I had only finished reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest the day before I saw the film! "Muppet!" I hear you say; "What a colossal mistake!" Fair enough. However, I had enjoyed the first two films, my wife had read all the books, I had already read the first two books, and I wanted to read at least one without knowing how it was going to end! This didn't ruin the film for me, I still enjoyed it, it just lacked the depth of the novel (not unusual).

Noomi Rapace is still perfect as the sullen, introvert Lisbeth Salander (though her character is less upwardly mobile in this outing, as she is confined to a hospital bed for a lot of the film), and Michael Nyqvist is good as Blomqvist (though he just doesn't come across as being quite right for the part, he's meant to be a handsome ladies man!).

The story continues directly from the previous film, with Lisbeth being helicoptered into hospital having been shot, buried alive, and having whacked her Dad on the head with an axe! The ins an outs of the plot are far too detailed to go into here (for a detailed description see The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson!). Suffice to say the climax (well the first one) is a court case where all the people who have messed up Salander over the years get their comeuppance (turns out there was a government conspiracy to keep a defected Russian spy out of trouble (Lisbeth's Dad!)).

Finally, having been acquitted of attempted murder of her father, Salander confronts Niedermann (the psycho who doesn't feel pain who tried to shoot her at the end of The Girl who Played with Fire (actually Salander's half brother (seriously, read the books!))). The action is maybe a bit clumsy, but it is entertaining to see Salander shoot several nails from a nail gun to fix Niedermann to the floor!

There was some messing around with the order of events around the court case, and the spurious appearance of a character who is only ever present online in the book, but I guess this was to add to the drama of the court case, which still works well. Then there was the incident of Erika Berger (Editor in Chief of Millennium magazine, played by Lena Endre), who doesn't move to a rival newspaper, as in the book, but still receives crank offensive emails. Who from? No-one knows in the film, as it is never resolved! Sloppy.

The other mildly irritating thing are the subtitles! No, not like that. Subtitles are fine with me, I'd much rather watch a film in its original language and read, than have awful dubbing. No, in this case, as is the case with the first two films, the subtitles are white with no background or shadow. This hardly seems a crime; except that there are surprisingly numerous scenes that are white or very bright at the bottom of the screen, at which point the subtitles are illegible! Duh!

Overall, good film, great series, great books.