Mission Impossible films have always had awesome villains, pretty ones like Sabine Moreau, and evil ones like Owen Davian. In this film, Esai Morales plays Gabriel – not an angel – who wants to play god and rule the Internet. But scarier than the man who wants to rule, is the sentient internet itself. And as one sips dark coffee in the darkness of the theatre, you want to ask the same question that you wanted to ask Mogambo (yes, of Mister India fame): If all the nukes are deployed at the same time by the sentient Internet called ‘The Entity’ and all people are destroyed, who is it going to rule over? But you are distracted by the magnificent set pieces that have Tom Cruise running across Westminster Bridge, swimming around floating torpedoes, jumping into icy waters, running in his undies on a treadmill… It’s popcorn time at the movies again!
So here’s what Ethan and his leftover IMF group has to do: Luther (Ving Rhames) has created a poison pill to neutralise the source code of the ‘Entity’ that has been threatening to take over the whole nuclear world and has promised to destroy it. While we saw Ethan steal the key to the source code in the previous film, we know that he will have to dive back into the icy waters and into the Russian submarine (wonderfully creepy dead crew) to get that drive. But the bad guy has stolen the poison pill because he wants control of the Entity. This time Ethan has help from the gorgeous Paris (whom he did not kill in the previous film) played by Pom Klementieff, and the pickpocket Grace (played by Hayley Atwell). Of course there’s Simon Pegg’s Benji who not only knows how stuff works in machines he has never seen before, but also magically manages to find a hat for the final climax in South Africa…It’s an action flick, so suspend your disbelief!
What money lessons can this slow to start but mad fun movie teach us?
Trust Ethan to save the day (And the world!)
If you are a skeptic, you will swear in the first hour of this three hour long saga where everyone praises Ethan Hunt, they steal a shot from Top Gun. But I digress. Ethan breaks the rules, is wanted by his own agency for breaking those rules, is accused of murdering his own boss and unable to prove why… But he saves the day, the damsel in distress, is able to show up in tuxedos to parties and hang from airplanes and tall buildings, offering moviegoers a reason to cheer when the bad guys are defeated…
When it comes to your money, isn’t your personal money manager like your Ethan Hunt? Always looking out for you? Tom Cruise may have brought parkour to the big screen, but your money manager makes sure your money grows by anticipating dips and troughs in the market and also pull you along when the market is riding high. It’s not corny to equate your money manager to the IMF agent called on again and again to save the world.
‘You spend too much time on the internet!’
It was immensely satisfying to hear Ethan beat up a would be assassin emphasising each word of the sentence.
In the film, we see how misinformation pits one group of people against another, fomenting hate. An apt story of our world where we rely heavily on information gleaned from the net and find ourselves in silos.
In such times, we must keep an eye out for information that manipulates money markets. And yes, there are financial decisions you could take reacting to that information or set investments on automation mode, which may not always work to your advantage.
Trusting your personal finance manager becomes very important and the fees you pay for a human assistant in decision making might be better for your finances than just relying on information available on the internet. Automation is good, but having your own personal Ethan Hunt who uses automation wisely is better. Find one for yourself who will swim through a scenario littered literally with torpedoes!
Tom Cruise’s hair looks a little scary at the beginning of the film, but his fitness and the stunts will make you forget that odd unkempt look. You decide that youare going to start on a fitness regime starting tomorrow. At the end of three hours you forget that you have been vanquished by the entity that took the shape of a big tub of cheese and caramel popcorn…