Tag Archives: Action

Five Great Jeremy Renner Performances

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Jeremy Renner earned his stripes just like a lot of people in Hollywood and has been playing bit parts for years. After years of forgettable supporting roles, and playing the heel in movies like “SWAT” to the in vogue stars of yesteryear like Colin Farrell and Michelle Rodriguez, he’s finally earned his place as one of the biggest and most marketable stars in Hollywood. Renner has displayed a keen persona that often makes him suitable for roles like military men, police officers, and the like, but he’s also capable of playing regular Joes. Renner is one of the more likable actors in Hollywood filling his resume with an array of blockbusters and prestige pictures. There are five of our favorite Jeremy Renner performances, so far.

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Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

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Ethan Hunt is no mere agent. He’s a force of nature that keeps pushing himself to the brink of imminent death every single time we meet him. Last time he hung on the side of a high rise, and this time he hangs along the side of a flying aircraft. Not to mention he merely drowns in one of the many close call operations he and the disbanded IMF commit towards. Tom Cruise lends the character an intensity and bug eyed gutsiness that make him a hero you want to root for, and someone you most definitely want on your side at all times. Hunt has met his match this time with the evil Lane (Sam Harris), a leader of a rising organization called the Syndicate, who is always one step ahead of Hunt, while sidekick Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) displays an enigmatic aura that makes Hunt uncertain if she’s friend or foe.

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Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

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It’s nice to see director Brad Bird inject a new sense of excitement and novelty in to the “Mission Impossible” movie series, as it now embraces its episodic origins to completely reboot the epic story of Ethan Hunt. After the pretty good third outing, “Ghost Protocol” sports an entirely different atmosphere, where the team from the IMF are still out and lurking about, while Ethan Hunt has become a pariah, now jailed in a Russian prison. After Simon Pegg’s character Benji stages a caper to free Ethan from prison, Ethan discovers that the world must be in dire trouble if he’s being turned to for help.

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Mortdecai (2015)

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Johnny Depp has never been one to be defined as a comedy genius of any sort, and it’s pretty telling of that fact when the one gag he has to ride on throughout “Mortdecai” is his mustache and how it twirls. That’s basically the defining comedic element of Mortdecai. He’s painfully proud of his mustache despite the obvious disgust by his loving wife, and he takes great pride of flashing it around. He even gleams proudly when he finds himself in America packed in to an elevator with men donning mustaches and beards of their own. That’s what counts as comedy in the painfully unfunny “Mortdecai.”

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Tomorrowland (2015)

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Brad Bird is certainly a fun storyteller filled with ideas about science fiction that’s a welcome break from the normal grim and grit of the modern era, I just wish “Tomorrowland” were a masterpiece. If not, I wish it were more than mediocre. As it is there’s a great movie somewhere in the script, there’s just too much narrative and disjointed writing to really see it rise to the surface and hit a home run. “Tomorrowland” is one of the more entertaining messes of the year. It’s a film that doesn’t introduce its heroine until thirty minutes in to the movie, and completely cuts her out of the equation in the finale. “Tomorrowland” is not a bad movie by any means, it’s just the writing is so scatterbrain and haphazard, I couldn’t really appreciate the whole shebang, in the end; which is sad, because I certainly wanted to love “Tomorrowland.”

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Spy (2015)

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When Melissa McCarthy is misused, she’s a bumbling, awkward, and unfunny mess trying way too hard (see: Tammy), but when she’s used correctly, she’s about as great as any other female comedian working in film today. McCarthy certainly is charming and has a down home quality to her that makes most roles she takes absolutely interesting. Even in such a derivative movie like “Spy,” McCarthy shines and arouses raucous laughs. And because of her, folks like Jude Law, Bobby Cannavale, and Jason Statham manage to shine and earn their own raucous laughter in the process. You wouldn’t think Law or Statham could be funny, but lo and behold, they’re just top notch in another great Paul Feig film about a unique female conquering some form of personal limitation.

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Ant-Man (2015)

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“Ant Man” seems like a stand alone superhero effort at first, but it fits comfortably in the pegs of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It also introduces us to a wonderful superhero who, by all logic, should not have translated in to such a great film. Surely enough, with a script by Edgar Wright (and various others) and an excellent cast (including a welcome Hispanic presence), “Ant Man” is one of the best adaptations of Marvel’s Phase Two in their Cinematic Universe. Like every hero in the Marvel Universe, “Ant-Man” is just an average man thrust in to great circumstances, and he has to earn his stripes as a crime fighter while overcoming his own flaws and insecurities.

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