#mi rewatch

And ugh, now I’m ending this movie real sad again, because of course he doesn’t have a reason to go back. The IMF is largely responsible for the murder of his friends, they set him up and were willing to charge him on the basis of bare circumstantial evidence, they imprisoned his Mom and Uncle to get to him, his trusted mentor turned out to be a heartless murderer—why the hell would he go back??

But in under two minutes of talking with Ethan, his glasses are off, and he’s leaning forward. Still resisting, but engaged. And then, he just lights up.

His sentences elongate, his cadence shifts from clipped to rhythmical, and he’s so earnestly delighted, almost in spite of himself, at the prospect of a proper challenge, the chance to exercise his skills and work with new equipment.

Since the murder of Ethan’s team, it’s the first time anyone on screen has seemed happy. It’s the first time a positive emotion has been expressed without guile or the hope of benefit through deception. Seeing it is like coming up for air.

It feels familiar, too. The way Luther is magnetically drawn to the prospect of “the Mount Everest of hacks,” can’t turn down a real proper challenge, holds echos of the Ethan we glimpse before the losses, the one who responds to being given a challenging role with: “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Ethan must have glimpsed the person he was mere days before, and clung to the memory. More than that, for a man who has no one to trust, discovering that Luther is motivated not by lust for wealth or power but by love, (even love for hacking), must have been unimaginably comforting.