The Ray Pletcher Blog

If there is one character that always seems to find himself on the wrong side of his employers, that's Ethan Hunt. Ethan Hunt is the main character in Mission Impossible played by Tom Cruise. In this film, Hunt is an agent for the IMF, an agency that will disavow any agent who fails a mission. Hunt works on a team under the leadership of his mentor Jim Phelps. However, the opening mission in the movie goes badly finding Hunt the apparent lone survivor and a fugitive from the IMF during a mission to retrieve a list of CIA agents. The story thrusts Hunt into the role of having to deduce the cause of his team’s demise and to clear his name before it's too late.     A major challenge this film had to pull off was giving us likeable characters to follow and it does just that. The film possesses many great qualities with Cruise at the forefront. Great characters are very prevalent with characters such as Ethan Hunt a charming agent who lives to take risks, Lu...

What would it look like if an American was assimilated into the Samurai culture? Well, that's what The Last Samurai directed by Edward Zwick and starring Tom Cruise captures in its story. The film follows Nathan Algren (Cruise) a Civil War soldier turned alcoholic as he is recruited to lead a westernized Japanese army into battle and deals with the fallout of this and Algren’s eventual turn to the way of the Samurai. The film is set in the 1870s setting the stage for the unique relationship between the Japanese and the West. As it stands Cruise is one of the best elements that stand out in this picture.      The film has a lot of great qualities which make it well worth the watch. When we first meet Cruise’s character Algren in the film he is a drunk suffering from nightmares from his war days. However, we get to see a well played out character journey with Algren during the course of the story as he heals from his wounds and embarks on a ne...

Is space an exciting locale to stage a movie? In the motion picture Interstellar directed by Christopher Nolan that is certainly the case as the story unfolds beautifully and makes space one of its characters. The story is set in the future where the world is on the brink of starvation, gravity isn’t perfect, and basically the world is in its worst case scenario as ex-astronaut Cooper played by Matthew McConaughey lives his life now as a farmer and parent of two children, Murph his rough around the edges daughter and his son Tom who has been sentenced to a life of farming by the school district. Cooper doesn’t feel satisfied with his place in the world; this sentiment is voiced by his father who states Cooper was born forty years too late or too early. Cooper is a man who seeks adventure, a yearning for something more than the tedious life he leads. This point is demonstrated well as early in the film on the way to a parent teacher meeting he chases after a drone in his truck...

“I didn’t kill my wife”. Those are the words spoken by the character Dr. Richard Kimble in the classic thriller The Fugitive. That iconic line is responded to by the classic protagonist/antagonist of the film US Marshal Sam Gerard with, “I don’t care”. This classic exchange highlights what makes this film so fun to watch which is the film’s ability to dig deep into the characters’ emotions and tell a thrilling chase story. In case you haven’t seen this film yet, The Fugitive is about an esteemed doctor, Richard Kimble who is framed for murdering his wife and sentenced to death on the run from the authorities led by US Marshal Sam Gerard as he seeks to clear his name. The plot takes us through the horrifying events that Kimble faces when facing death for a crime he didn’t commit.             The film is filled with many great moments with successful storytelling structure. The pacing of the movie is an element to be...