I Spy with my Little Eye

So 2015 is spoiling us with the spy films! We've already had Kingsman: The Secret Service, one of the best films of the year, as well as Spy, and we're going to have Bridge of Spies and Spectre coming out later this year.

But, let's have a look at the two spy films that have been hitting the box office in the past few weeks: the fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, as well as The Man from U.N.C.L.E.


Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

7.8/10 on IMDb
93% on Rotten Tomatoes
This film dives straight into it as we follow Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt trying to bring down the Syndicate. Straight up, the very first scene starts off with an intense sequence and you know that if THIS is the opening scene, the rest of the film is going to be pretty amazing.

Sure enough, the rest of the film was non-stop action scene after action scene, interesting plot development after interesting plot development.

I really don't like Tom Cruise (there's something off-putting about his voice, don't you think? - and let's just forget about how weird he was), but he has been on a winning streak in the last few years with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Edge of Tomorrow, and now, this.

Tom Cruise is actually insane, like he was ACTUALLY hanging off the side of that plane and he actually learned how to hold his breath for OVER SIX MINUTES to film that underwater scene (see his interview on The Tonight Show). Like... that's CRAZY! No matter how much you dislike this guy, you have to give him MASSIVE PROPS for doing all that.

But, he's definitely not the only amaizng actor in this film. Simon Pegg is once again hilarious and great, and Jeremy Renner, Alec Baldwin and Ving Rhames all bring their A-games as well.

BUT.

The chick in this film is amazing. I've never seen her in anything before but she's incredibly pretty, incredibly sexy, and such a bad ass. She is going to go on to do some pretty amazing things.

As I said before, the film is pretty much non-stop action, and my favourite scene was actually a really really amazing motorbike/car chase. It's such a notable scene, even though it's just another chase scene and it's not like we haven't seen one of those before (looking at you, all 120 minutes of Mad Max: Fury Road).

So in the end, this is a really great film that deserves to be watched, hopefully in the cinemas.


The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

7.8/10 on IMDb
67% on Rotten Tomatoes
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a comedic spy film based on the TV show of the same name from the 60's. Henry Cavill stars as Solo, an American spy that grudgingly gets paired up with Russian spy Illya (Armie Hammer) to prevent the weaponisation of a few nuclear warheads.

I was expecting another Kingsman, but unfortunately, this did not deliver. Even worse is the fact that this had to follow Mission: Impossible. Yikes.

Only a few jokes landed well, some of the jokes I didn't even realise were meant to be jokes (because I probably just subconsciously disregarded them), and the rest landed, but like really really softly... like a feather slowly floating down onto the ground and not making any sort of impact on you.

The music was also super weird. I felt like most of the music didn't match the scenes at all, and the music was also way too loud. Sometimes when they had an intense scene going on, the music was so upbeat and happy that it wasn't even intense, it just looked comical (but in the bad sense).

The directing was also really weird for a substantial amount of time. For example (and this is just one example), they had a number of scenes where something would happen, but it's been edited so you don't get the full picture and then LITERALLY A MINUTE LATER one of the characters explains what they just did and they cut back to the footage they JUST showed us and show the full story - but even when they show the full story it's edited so it's really choppy and fast paced like a montage and I didn't really like that. It was just so common in the film you could tell that they thought it was a really cool plot device but it wasn't that great.

Another thing is that they didn't really explain the plot. I know it's a spy film, so there will be some things that leave you wondering what just happened, but I didn't really understand what they were doing throughout the entire film. Like I can't really explain what the plot was to you; I just know there's an American spy, a Russian spy, a German (?) woman, some other woman, and nuclear weapons. And the main characters need to save the world obviously. But that's about it.

The last act wasn't that great... as I said before, the directing is weird and there was meant to be the climactic fight between good and evil and yet it was all chopped up and edited so that you just kept seeing disrupted scenes that kept disrupting each other, it was all a mess and completely not climactic for a fight against the baddies. The very ending was also a bit of a cop-out.

The movie also felt really long. There were so many add-on missions or side-missions or detours or whatever that it seemed like it kept going on and on and on (and it doesn't help the fact that you don't know what the MAIN plot even is), and at the end you're just unsatisfied.

So, in the end, I wouldn't suggest seeing this in cinema or buying the DVD. If you want to watch it, maybe just go watch Kingsman again.

A few side notes:

Henry Cavill's constantly-narrating voice was at first funny, but then it became weird and unrealistic

On the other hand, Alicia Vikander's voice is as mesmerising as usual

The costuming is fantastic (especially for Elizabeth Debicki's character - the things you can do with black and white!)

Is it just me, or was that opening-of-the-safe really not that impressive? Like it didn't even look that hard and yet he kept talking about how good he was that he could open it?

Once again, just watch Kingsman again.