...
>>>
>>>There is plenty more of that stuff in MI:3. Some of the stunts are so over the top you just smile and enjoy them. One of my favorites is when Tom Cruise does sort of a bungee jump from the top of one Shanghai skyscraper onto the roof of a lower, and quite distant, skyscraper. (A heavily secured building where the prize is held, of course). He lands with the thud you would expect after such a long drop, then skids down the sloped glass roof. He stops himself just before plummeting off the edge, shakes his head once or twice, then gets up and races like a track star up the roof. Another one is when Cruise has been drugged and is in danger of passing out. He gives his gun to his wife, who has never fired a gun before. Soon thereafter a bad guy comes to kill them both. She spins toward him and drops in one motion, then leaves a tight cluster of bullets in the guy's chest -- blam, blam, blam, blam, blam! Instant marksmanship, with style points for doing it while someone is
>trying
>>>to shoot you.
>>
>>No doubt properly cradling her firing hand in the cup of her other, with the right amount of elbow bend, and allowing for (and not being surprised by) the recoil.
>
>
>She is diving rightward, horizontal to the floor, so I doubt she notices the recoil at all.
>
>That Tom Cruise, he may be known for his jumping on couches but he is a heck of a runner, too. In MI:3 he not only races up that roof, he races through Shanghai alleys in near world record time, dodging pedestrians at every step. A colleague back at HQ is giving him GPS directions -- turn left at the alley, go right at the second street, etc. "You've only got seven tenths of a mile to go -- run!" And 30 seconds of arm pumping later, he's there. Do the math.
>
>Amazingly enough, this is not Tom Cruise's best running performance in the movies. In "Collateral" (a terrific movie with just a couple of howlers) he races after Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith like the cyborg in "Terminator 2" -- AFTER BEING SHOT IN THE HEAD. That's determination.

That's only 41 yds per second! You Americans are so used to driving everywhere you just can't imagine it, but you do have some of the fastest runners in the world.

Mind you, you gotta hand it to him, he does do an awful lot of stunts himself. In MI:2 at the start he was hanging from a precipice by just one hand. I don't know how much of that was blue screen but it sho' looked real to me.

Trouble is: the bugger survives them all.

Didn't Sly Stalone do his own REAL stunts in Cliffhanger too?

How about "Fight Club"? The guy (can't remember the actor's name) survives shooting himself through the mouth (with apparently few life-threatening problems) although it HAD killed his other self - Brad Pit