Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Directed by Brad Bird

Starring Tom Cruise, some other white dude, some English white dude, some bangin’ mulatto chick, assorted Slavic and Scandinavian white bad dudes, that white dude from Lost, and Tom Wilkinson

Okay. I would normally say spoiler alert but that’s not quite it. I was in the middle of watching this Ghost Protocol shiznit and thought to myself: “Impossible boozy mission? Challenge: accepted.” By that point I was already five drinks deep so my rationale was hazy at best. In fact I’m pretty sure I then immediately started humming the MI theme song to myself as I cracked my third Miller.

Consequently the only things I remember about this movie can be described as “fragments,” loosely supplemented by drunken scribblings on my trusty Moleskin notepad that my mother gave me two Christmases ago. To be fair to my mother, I’m pretty sure that if she knew I would be using it as a tool to document my drunken misadventures she would have gotten me Zelda or a hammock instead. Because I love slaying stuff and lying down.

So the MO for this review is going to be merely citing all the moments of MIGP that I remember in chronological order (the latter will be trickier). From that I’ll try to infer what the movie is about and run my trademark cavalier, devil-may-care commentary about Tom Cruise not owning enough people and chicks and their breasts. Sound like a plan? Good.

THINGS I REMEMBER ABOUT MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL

• That white dude from Lost totally gets iced by a woman

What better way to establish IMF agents as huge pussies early on than by having them axed by waifish French bimbos? Nice! Get this: secret agent man blasts his way out of a building with secret documents, makes a death-defying escape, and fleeing the scene a moment later he lets his guard down to CHECK A TEXT MESSAGE.

Just like that, millions of dollars in spy training are wasted because the first lesson on the first day of spy school ought to have been:

Drinking

Driving

Texting

Covert operations

 Lesson 1: Don’t do any of these things while doing another one of these things.

(Yeah, fine, some of you will say “Well hey Ben! How about driving and covert operations? Can’t they go together?” Okay, nice one, and the answer to your question is fuck you.)

• Tom Cruise narrowly escapes from jail with his boyfriend

Not so sure about you guys, but if I got locked in Russian prison for first-degree murder and had a two-minute window of opportunity to escape I would not double back for my shower buddy. Just sayin. You’re Tom Cruise. You can smoke whoever’s pole you want. And probably do.

• The Kremlin explodes

Yes, the whole Kremlin. Yes, I know, it’s stupid but the guy who directed this has only ever done animated films. Because he’s a grown man and makes cartoons for a living I’m taking it as a given that he’s mentally retarded. So cut him some slack, alright?

They gloss over it pretty quickly, actually, but it has something to do with stealing nuclear launch codes and framing Tom Cruise. Tom Wilkinson comes to warn Tom Cruise but then Tom Wilkinson gets shot and dies and makes me sad because I have been drinking.

• The villain’s name is Cobalt and he appears for about five minutes in this movie

Double black belt: Aikido and Noshing

What better way to establish your core villain as a huge pussy early on than by giving him a name that even Steven Seagal wouldn’t get out of bed for? Mind you these days Steven Seagal looks like he only gets out of bed for these two guys Ben & Jerry.

But seriously, whatever happened to the days when villains had badass names? Like Darth Vader or Jaws or The Jackal or Cyrus the Virus or even that Le Chiffre guy who cried blood? Sure he loses at poker and gets his ass whipped a lot but his tears are fucking blood. The only way they could have made that guy more of a hardass is by having him sweat crude oil and shit dragon eggs. Pure awesome coming out of every orifice.

Cobalt is to villains as Kim Kardashian is to women. You’re upset that you even know they exist. I’ll bet money they gave him that stupid name because MIGP's screenwriter approached the producers with a list of potential villain names that went something like this:

Ocker

Cadmium yellow

Chartreuse

Vermillion

Saffron

Cerulean

Cobalt

And the producers just fucking stood there saying: “Well… at least he gave us a choice, right?”

• There’s one scene where Tom Cruise chases a guy through a sandstorm

I’m pretty sure I still have some bad lingering memories from those really bright desert scenes in The Adventures of Tintin so I took a nap during this part. I’m guessing Tom Cruise never caught the guy because that would have meant the movie ending sooner and guest movieboozer Patrick waking me up. Or security.

• At first Jeremy Renner is an analyst, but then he’s not who he appears to be

Remembering this moment WIN

Nice twist. That never happens in spy movies.

• In one scene Jeremy Renner floats

He must be a Jedi. Or it’s magnets. Can’t remember which. But now that makes me think… what if Yoda were using magnets all along?

• Cobalt owns no one in this movie

The last half hour of this movie was spent drunk and confused about what was going on. This Cobalt guy commandeers himself a sweet fucking nuke and then just fires it at the States without asking for ransom. So while Tom Cruise is trying to stop him, I’m leaning over to Patrick all like: “Pooch! What the fuck is going on?! Where’s the ransom? … Bahahahahahaha! That nuke is fucking AWESOME! Look at it going through space! Did you see it going through space like that and jettisoning its, like… shell and stuff? … Pooch, did you see that shit?”

Seriously, for about five minutes I could not shut up about this goddamn nuclear rocket. I was like a Down Syndrome child who just saw a laser pointer for the first time. So thoroughly impressed was I that I scribbled this on my pad:

“If I had a nuke this amazing E would save it. For later.”

I’m assuming by ‘E’ I meant ‘I’ and to my credit I wrote that without a flashlight pen. That’s 100% pure spatial awareness, folks.

As an aside: what impressed me most (about myself) while watching this movie was that even plunging headfirst into the most absurd drunkenness in recent memory, there was still a Sober Ben at that back of my brain saying: “Dude. This movie is fucking terrible. You should be at home watching Suits instead of this because it’s clever and filmed in Canada. Represent dude.” Of course JuggernautDrunk Ben came crashing through moments later, all like: “DUUUUDE! You needs to fuck up your brain more because IT’S WEDNESDAY!!!!”

Which one do you think I listened to? Yeah. Exactly.

• The girl in this movie neglected to show me her tits

In her defence she did look pretty busy doing other stuff. Still, if she were a stripper I would have left a lousy tip.

• Ving Rhames shows up at the end to give the movie to lend some street cred

You now have 1.5 black people in your movie. Respect. I felt like I was watching the BET Awards.

Yeah, that’s pretty much alls I remember. If it means anything I was hungover until Monday.

Damage: 9/10 (pre-movie: ≈110 ml Glenkinchie 12yo 43% ABV; during: 5 x 330 ml Miller Genuine Draught and ≈110 ml Jura Superstition 45% ABV; post-movie: 1 x 330 ml Einstock fucking Viking beer. Grrrrrr.)

Boozy rating: 9/10 (What? You look surprised. I had an amazing time.)

DOOM -- stay-at-home boozy Hannukah edition

Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

Starring Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Raz Adoti, Ben Daniels, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

*** WARNING: VERY MINOR SPOILERS *** (as if you’re going to watch this trash, right?)

Oscar season is probably my least favourite time of year. Sure, the holidays are great, but the preponderance of films released tactically in November/December, ushered shamelessly into theatres to drive a Hollywood lobby around them, drives me fairly batshit. The audacity of studios – contemptuous enough towards audiences that they feel comfortable telling us what a “good movie” is or should be – is an annual affront that only becomes more offensive as the movies become more shittier. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? Please. I’ve seen better film form atop hollandaise sauce.

So instead of spending a small fortune to see a useless piece of art that will vanish from institutional memory faster than Shakespeare in Love (although, to be fair, Gwyneth Paltrows funbags are permanently seared into my brain), guest movieboozer Patrick and I combined class and crass by making some delectable Chase vodka martinis and watching a 1½-star movie about Martian beasties. Mondays get the boozy treatment FOR SERIOUS.

This is what credibility looks like. Fuckers.

Shore leave is cancelled for a small team of tougher-than-tough, futuristic Marines when Sarge (The Rock) receives orders to respond to a distress call on Mars. Scientists are apparently missing, there’s talk of an emergency quarantine, and things at the Olduvai research facility seem to have gone altogether tits-up.

There’s a bunch of talk, a bunch of “let’s split up, you two guys search this area, you two guys search this other area, find the civilians, and kill everything else so we can all go back home and get some PROTEIN,” and then beasties introduced through some very loose scientific justification.

*** NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION EXTRA ***: See back there how I used the words “very loose” without drawing a parallel to or making a joke about Lindsay Lohan? Bam. New Year shizzle. I’m becoming a less belligerent person. Resolved.

You’ve played the video game. You know what’s up. A movie of this nature and at best tenuous quality can only truly hit the mark if everyone it in dies. No. Not merely dies, but gets pwned in thorough fashion. Like do y’all remember how hard Benicio del Toro gets pwned in Sin City when he flies off the handle at Brittany Murphy and a bunch of hookers? That level. That’s the level this movie needs.

The movie never reaches this level.

Worse still is that your main guys aren’t dealing nearly enough damage either. Doom is basically a 90-minute invitation to get drunk and watch a group of juice-monkeys fire senseless amounts of bullets and then get their shit ruined by aliens. It’s not complicated. Jim Cameron had no problem accomplishing this and that guy made Titanic, which I take as testimony that he’s borderline retarded. To spend $200 million on a sinking ship and a Céline Dion showcase is strong evidence (although, to be fair, Kate Winslet’s funbags are permanently seared into my brain).

Karl Urban is a satisfying action hero but essentially has no reason to exist in this movie. No one has any reason to exist in any movie The Rock is in. This guy takes keeping it real to the next level. A former boozy Tuesday excursion to Faster is a fine example. The Rock was released from jail and went on a grudge-killing spree while I went on a Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking spree. Me and The Rock we’re bonded deep.

True enough. What they don't do, however, is PWNAGE.

Which brings me to my next point: The Rock seriously does nothing in this movie. I stayed in a had, like, six vodka martinis to escape movies that treat me with contempt and at the apex of my drunk I realize that the most that Rock will ever do in this movie is yell at people. Don’t get me wrong, his freakouts and one-liners in this movie are totally epic; they are in fact pretty much the only reason to watch it. But when you cast The Rock as a special ops Marine in a movie about Martian beasties, I want to smell what he’s fucking cookin’. I want to see him do 20+ neck-breaks and connect Hell Knights anus to mouth (like a centipede). I paid £5 for this DVD so I feel I am entitled.

Possibly WORSEST is the under-use of Ben Daniels as Corporal Eric "Goat" Fantom. For starters, and I don’t think a great many would disagree with me here, but a special forces dude nicknamed Goat makes my nipples erect. It’s badass.

Second, this particular special forces dude is revealed to be a bit of a Godbag and at first you’re like “whatever, so was Britney Spears and we all know how that turned out.” Okay, right, I know, but then this cat knocks over an oxygen tank while patrolling and takes the Lord’s name in vain and as penance for his sin he CARVES A FUCKING CROSS INTO HIS ARM WITH A BUCKNIFE! He’s got a collection of Jesus scars! I know, right? Iciest coldest motherfucker alive (after Vin Diesel and Justin Timberlake, of course).

Full kit, no cleave. Thanks.

Third point: once he gets infected with this strain of zombie monster disease he commits suicide by bludgeoning himself to death against a plate-glass window. Dude bites the dust a third of the way into the film having fired less than a magazine of ammo and clocks zero kills. This all upset my drunk to such a point that I had to strangle a hobo on my way home just so that my evening would break even.

Plus Rosamund Pike doesn’t even take her gear off. I paid £5.

Damage: 5/10 (6 x Chase vodka martinis, probably around 2.5 oz of booze and 4 olives to each)

Boozy rating: 2/10 (I gave it a point above utter failure because there are two classic one-liners and it was Hannukah so I was feeling generous)