Tom Cruise is back. In this big budget flick directed by Pixar
favorite Brad Bird (Ratatouille and The Incredibles), Cruise sets out to
restore his place in the pantheon of larger-than-life action heroes. Of course
he does it with the help of a few costars because the team is the best part of
a Mission: Impossible movie. The worst part about reviewing them is the colon
any time you type the name.
MI:4
(Hereafter referred to as Ghost Protocol), is just as globe-trotting as its
predecessors and moves at a frenetic pace that doesn’t make one feel the over
2-hour length of the film. In the standard action flick where the hero ends up
in random locations so often that you can’t be sure exactly where he or she is
at that exact moment. Not so with Ghost Protocol. Michael Giacchino makes sure
to announce the team’s arrival in each country with a score that emphasizes that
country’s most stereotypical contributions to music. I’m glad they weren’t in
China this time around or we may have heard Carl Douglas’ Kung Fu Fighting in
the background.
The movie
begins with a mission to break Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) out of a Serbian prison.
Quite quickly, Hunt and his team are set up for bombing the Kremlin and are on
the run as they try to foil a criminal mastermind with a plan to nuke the
world. It’s all great fun and the action set pieces are enough to warrant the
price of admission. Whether in Russia, Dubai or India, Brad Bird makes sure his
cast looks good, operates well and moves at such a fast pace that the audience
can’t pick out the gaping plot holes. I certainly didn’t while I watched Cruise
scale the Burj Khalifa like he was on a playground jungle gym or hit his head
just a couple too many times to still get up and keep running after his target.
One of the
many inside jokes of the movie is that the fancy gadgets supplied to the team
tend to malfunction, starting with the famous 5-second self-destruct sequence.
I’d always wondered how James Bond and Ethan Hunt used their devices with effortless
ease when my TV refuses to cooperate on such a regular basis. Probably because
their malfunctions leave them hanging by one hand a mile above the Earth.
The
rest of the cast is superb with Jeremy Renner showing potential to take over
the franchise as an “analyst” with a set of field skills to boot, Simon Pegg
doing what he does best and Paula Patton entering the big leagues confidently. The
one actor I would have demanded more from is Michael Nyqvist. His character’s
motivations are a bit shaky to begin with and perhaps some of his scenes were
cut but I didn’t feel the intensity I would have liked. Granted, I was
comparing him to Philip Seymour Hoffman who was magnificently villainous in the
previous Mission: Impossible outing.
As fun
as the ride was, I felt like it was exactly that – a careening roller coaster
that was superbly fun but didn’t let me catch my breath as I hurtled along
towards the ending. Entertaining as Ghost Protocol was, I prefer MI: III which
combined the same kind of fun and danger with a smarter plot.
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