miscellanium (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
miscellanium) wrote2022-11-26 11:18 pm
miscellanium) wrote2022-11-26 11:18 pm
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mission impossible: encounter (1971)
something about this makes me think of, like, paintings depicting the christian annunciation
the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 3/5
the plot is pretty straightforward: he plays a lawyer for a mobster that the group are trying to take down and the group decides to exploit the lawyer's resentful wife as a weak link by forcing her into rehab and impersonating her.
there's no cold war wackiness in this one (meaning the obligatory xenophobia is also lacking, though there is one very strange racist exchange during one of the therapy scenes) but there's plenty of other absurdities that make this fun to watch - magical rubber masks, for example, and truly bizarre cutting-edge 1970s "group therapy" sessions - and the main actress, elizabeth ashley, who you might recognize from her later role in the nic cage feature vampire's kiss, gives us just the right amount of melodrama called for by the premise. honestly she carries this episode by playing dane's alcoholic wife - dane does a solid job, and his approach to method acting really shows in some places, but he's a bit hamstrung by the vague accent he's putting on. generic "american tough guy", i think, and it's not usually distracting but there's a couple scenes where it doesn't do his delivery any favors. shame, because dane really has what it takes to play sympathetic bad guys/antagonists. so this doesn't rate as highly as his commandante episode but he gets to do much more here than just looking cute in the survivors, and the stuff with ashley's character is compelling enough to make sitting through the other dane-less scenes worth it. unfortunately (or fortunately) dane isn't in any of the therapy scenes.
it probably is worth warning for domestic violence, however - there's one scene where he slaps her without any warning and both of them do a great job with it but that might make it harder to watch for some. and then she's forcibly manhandled by a few different people, sometimes for restraint or forced institutionalization and sometimes as part of the really strange therapy sessions lol, and there's a scene or two where she throws and breaks things.
yeah yeah i called dane's character sympathetic but he's a wifebeater, cancel me, etc. my policy is generally "if someone lays hands on you irl then leave them asap" but in fiction it can be a little different. what i mean is that you can see the conflict in his eyes and dane sells him as someone who was a good husband, once, but the narrative has decided he's irredeemable. this makes the ending more upsetting to me than i think they intended, honestly, because yeah he dies (not really a spoiler with his track record let's be real) and she has no idea, she's just being forced back into rehab when he gets murdered and the mission impossible crew doesn't seem to really be thinking about her psychological welfare at all. what kind of support is she going to have when she gets out? could he have been a good husband again, if they'd been able to escape the mob he'd gotten involved with? we're not asked to consider that at all but i really feel as though dane plays him as though he had the potential. how much of that is his performance and how much is me just being biased because it's dane, idk, but it makes the story of this more interesting than a lot of mission impossible episodes (imo).
i'm not positive whether it's REALLY good makeup or an actual scar - it's hard to tell if he had it in the 1967 episode since that one's pretty dark. a damn shame the film quality for rituals is what it is because i could compare some of those lovely closeups.... i didn't adjust the color/light on this or any of the following screencaps btw
this was just a really cute face i had to. impatiently waiting on a stakeout....
something about the way his hair curls on his forehead here is SUPER cute. gay little curlicue. it's hidden more in other shots but show me those curls baby
his legs are SO LONG it's comical to see him on a chair like this. i want to point and say "BIG LEGGIES" like i'm talking about one of my cats
i think he has the kind of face that would've looked FANTASTIC in black and white the older he got. make him alec harvey in brief encounter and people everywhere would faint in the theaters
he makes this face a split second before he slaps her and i gotta say it caught me off guard the first time too - i could tell he was frustrated but the transition was as effective for this viewer as it was for her. but also i like seeing when he makes that lopsided smile/smirk
i will freely admit to being horny on main and thinking about feeling his hands grip me like that. big man
*makes kissy noises*
i just really like the shape of his mouth here ok. a buddy in my discord server said that he talks like he "makes more room for vowels in his mouth" than most actors nowadays which led us to discussing the old mid-atlantic accent encouraged in stage/tv during the time he would've been taking acting lessons&c. apparently there's a more northern version called canadian dainty and i LOVE that term. dainty dane....
you can see the scar here again if you look closely. also pouty lil gummi worm lips
relatable because i too would be checking out his butt even if we just had a bomb thrown at us
it's such a fleeting moment but i was very pleasantly surprised by the framing and colors of this shot
he is SO cute and also i like how they're using the metal wall for the lighting
seeing him check out a roll of microfilm had me going *leonardo dicaprio pointing meme* because i use microforms all the time at my job lol
there was a chase scene that didn't screencap well (too much movement) but you get to see him execute a great turn on the stairs that is probably from his football days lol and he books it with his long leggies.... he has a stunt double for the bit where he gets shot and falls over a table but it's back to him for the corpse shot, as you'll see.
if only i could've been one of those men.... having him at my mercy..... look at that ribcage. should've gotten his shirt shot off in a captain kirk moment so we could see those sexy bones
if i had to rank his three mission impossible episodes in terms of rewatchability, i think it'd go commandante, the survivors, then this one. not because his performance is lesser (in the survivors he's mostly standing around being adorable lol) but because it's a little hard to watch just for fun. granted, the imperialist gaslighting in commandante is also a boner kill, but he's having so much fun with the role it's easier to ignore the upsetting aspects of that episode. that said, if you chose to watch only two i'd insist you skip the survivors and watch this one along with commandante. you get to see him do way more here and regardless of whether you think he does a good job or not the rest of the episode is quite the experience.
bonus:
his height makes this car look like a clown car LMAO
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