Like a neophyte, blunderbuss George Romero, Wes Craven often merged social commentary into his macabre tales. The difference is Romero never forgot to also be suspenseful and not veer to far from the intent of terror. In the frustratingly dawdling horror-comedy People Under The Stairs, he deconstructs the Reagan-Era fantasy of the nuclear family with Everett McGill and Wendy Robie as facsimiles of Ronald and Nancy (especially disciplinarian McGill’s oil-slick black hair). It’s a bit of a muddled stretch (with night-vision air raid footage from the Persian Gulf) but Craven is more incisive with the racial gentrification and ghettoized motif.

It’s Stygian circumstances that coerce the main character to align himself with Leroy (Ving Rhames). It might seem incendiary to postulate that because the characters are black, they are disregarded by the landlord and verging on eviction, but there is a ring of truth to Craven’s urban portrait in the vein of Spike Lee. It’s a skin-crawling anti-yuppie nightmare with the minorities literally being enslaved by the WASP-y blue-bloods.

One of my pet peeves is overly resourceful, feisty children and Brandon Adams’ jive-talking Poindexter “Fool” Williams is a nuisance with the attitude of a miniaturized Richard Roundtree. For his role, Craven manipulates us with the ill-advised child-in-peril ploy but “Daddy” and “Mommy” are bumbling ignoramuses for the most part so they barely pose a threat since they don’t eliminate him when they have a chance.

Meanwhile, Everett and Robie are the possibly incestuous showstoppers. In his introduction, Everett is gnashing on a mound of meat while spitting out the buckshot shells which is suggestive of trespasser cannibalism. The gimp mask rampage is another gonzo set piece but the repetition with the Rottweiler chases rapidly wear thin our patience.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre quest is fatuous and once Rhames is ejected from the movie, it devolves into a geek show with another one of my debilitating issues: inbred, freakish cellar-dwellers who are secretly sidekicks to the protagonist (ex. The tongue-less Roach who prowls through the walls’ crawlspace). The music sounds like low-grade Bernard Hermann reinterpreted for a Lifetime movie. Ving enlivens the film’s booby-trapped first half (“Maybe the president will make me Secretary of Pussy”) but his early departure bodes a glossy do-over of The Hills Have Eyes.

Rating: 2.25 out of 5

So far this summer I’ve covered retrospectives and reappraisals of three major franchises with roots in nostalgia. Each of them is embarking on their fifth cinematic journey. To say that Terminator: Genisys and Vacation (2015) were coolly received would be an understatement. On the other hand, the Mission: Impossible series is in no danger of becoming antiquated and by virtue of that, Rogue Nation is an inexorably exciting entry in the spycraft subgenre.

Continuing from Ghost Protocol, the IMF has been dissolved due to the serendipitous events where a nuclear warhead narrowly clipped a skyscraper before submerging into the bosom of the ocean. Not known for their continuity, Christopher McQuarrie handsomely tweaks the conventions especially the embedded message inside a vinyl record where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is entrapped and incapacitated within a booth.

At this point, Cruise should be top billed for his audacious stuntwork like Jackie Chan or Burt Reynolds. In this installment of his practical prowess, he sprints onto an Airbus Atlas airplane and he is bodily latched to a door while it achieves breakneck altitude. Of course, Cruise doesn’t cease there. He holds his breath for nearly six minutes in a tour-de-force underwater sequence where he must switch profile cards in a tank whilst conserving his oxygen.

While I do venerate Cruise and his unflappable enthusiasm, it borders on vainglorious ego inflation when Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) blusters about him having “no equal” to the British Prime Minister. That aside, the main chink in the armor is the villain. Outside of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian, Mission: Impossible isn’t rife with outstanding foes for Hunt. Sean Harris is certainly unsettling with his slightly strangulated voice but they can’t stifle the fact that he is a cog in a wider conspiracy.

Unfortunately, possibly due to obligations elsewhere, Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames are the proverbial benchwarmers this time out with Renner mostly poker-faced in front of formal government inquiries. McQuarrie occasionally mutes the Joe Kraemer score to properly refocus on the agog claustrophobia ala the aforementioned Moroccan power station set piece.

Admittedly, newcomer Rebecca Ferguson is a gorgeous femme fatale but her pendulous loyalty is rickety. Why would anyone align themselves with her after her incessant betrayals? She is akin to Mack from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The callback to the glass booth with Solomon Lane (Harris) is clever but the conclusion is a bit listless.

Suffice it to say, Rogue Nation is another scrappy, albeit hyperextended blockbuster in Mission Impossible’s belt and I wouldn’t be opposed to the proposed sixth film. As long as the 53-year-old actor-producer Cruise is the purveyor of quality, Mission Impossible have no foreseeable end game.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

With Tom Cruise committing his suicide to celluloid (or digital) again for Rogue Nation on July 31st, I thought it would be appropriate to dissect the entries leading up to his latest untenable assignment.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
It probably seemed unlikely in 1996 that Tom Cruise, one of the most lionized box office stars, would saddle himself to a franchise when he had a veritable smorgasbord of projects to choose from. And yet five films later with rumors of a sixth installment already unspooling at Paramount Pictures, the espionage brand is at its pinnacle of popularity.

For the first outing, Brian De Palma is the helmsman and it incontrovertibly emblazoned with his hallmarks. A dinner rendezvous where Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is accused of being a double agent is framed with traditional Dutch angles. More than once, he shifts to his most characteristic, neoclassical shot- the POV of a predator in pursuit of their quarry.

De Palma doesn’t overreach into his Hitchcockian worship on this film although the amount of double and triple crosses become absolutely absurd. While it is culpable for the attributes that are synonymous with Mission: Impossible (the latex masks, the gadgetry, the team disavowal), it is also the most tedious of the bunch. Scenes of high-wire tension like the aforementioned combustible-gum escape are showstoppers but they are diamonds hidden within the almost somnambulistic pace and contrivances.

On top of that, Cruise hadn’t quite polished his dashing action chops yet and he often comes across as smarmy in his NOC exchanges with Max (the coquettish cougar Vanessa Redgrave). Judging from these past few paragraphs, it could be construed that I was underwhelmed by this preliminary adventure. On the contrary, the film is redeemed immeasurably by two sequences that are categorized in the annals of action movie history.

The first is the crisply executed harness stunt where Ethan is suspended in a temperature-and-volume-garrisoned room where the slightest sound or rise in heat could trigger an alarm. De Palma wisely ratchets the breathlessness to nearly exhausting lengths with complications from a rat in the ventilation system to a bead of sweat off Ethan’s glass. The second is the Channel Tunnel chase which is still dazzling in its breakneck speed and rear projection for the train.

Yes, it’s mildly disenchanting that the team is dispatched early on (Emilio Estevez’s tech guy Jack Harmon would’ve been an amusingly wiseacre recurring character) and the murder mystery is an inscrutable web of deceit. Nevertheless, the film is urbane, moderately engrossing entertainment of the highest caliber and it spawned the modern-day spy genre.
Rating: 3 out of 5