Ethan Hunt: Tom Cruise
Brandt: Jeremy Renner
Benji: Simon Pegg
Jane: Paula Patton
Hendricks: Michael Nyqvist
Sidorov: Vladimir Mashkov
Paramount Pictures presents
a film directed by Brad Bird. Written by Josh Applebaum & André Nemec.
Based on the television series created by Bruce Geller. Running time: 133 min.
Rated PG-13 (for sequences of intense action and violence).
For the last thirty years,
the Hollywood machine has worked on perfecting one genre of film in
particular—the action flick. Nothing has been paid more attention by the
Hollywood dollar than the evolution of the action flick. Technological
advancements have allowed directors to expand their toolbox to awe audiences
into action comas over the years, and some have truly utilized every trick in
Hollywood’s book to turn action into an art form. With his live action
directorial debut, director Brad Bird turns in what I would categorize as an
action ballet under the “Mission: Impossible” banner. “Ghost Protocol” is
action perfection, with only two small elements holding it back from total
perfection—an underdeveloped villain and an over sentimentalized epilogue.
The underdeveloped villain
can be forgiven. There’s hardly time. Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt, introducing
a mostly new team, including Jeremy Renner as an agent who isn’t quite what he
seems. The new team must be assembled. Cruise has to show us how big his
muscles have become. We need to see how sexy the female member of the team is.
The technician must crack a few jokes here and there. There are some major
international landmarks to destroy. A cat and mouse chase must be established,
not only between the IMF team and the bad guy, but also between some good guys
who must mistake the IMF team for bad guys. They all have to be disavowed. Some
cars must be destroyed in a couple of manners never seen before. There must be
some infighting between the good guys. Cruise has to scale an impossible
monument. It has to look like there’s no way the good guys can win. And
finally, they’ve got to stop the destruction of the world. Can you really blame
them if the villain is just the guy they’re trying to stop?
A plot synopsis seems
pointless for a film like this because it would just sound like every other spy
thriller, there are parts that are too complicated to explain in a limited
space, and trying to figure it all out is part of the fun. I can tell you that
Cruise (“Tropic Thunder”) is back in the middle of everything, after being
mysteriously disconnected from the events that have occurred in the previous
“Mission: Impossible” movies. He doesn’t even know that Benji (Simon Pegg,
“Paul”) has been promoted from his desk job of being the comic relief to field
operative, so he can bring his quips out on the mission this time. Paula Patton
(“Precious”) is Agent Carter, bringing the female sex appeal to the table along
with a little vendetta that threatens to bring the entire operation crashing
down at one point. Brandt is played by Renner (“The Hurt Locker”) as a pencil
pusher who seems out of his element once he gets stuck on the mission due to
circumstances beyond everyone’s control, but he may know a little more about
the spy game than he’s letting on.
Oh, yes, there’s an evil
plot about nuclear warheads and launch codes that a madman named Hendricks
(Michael Nykvist, from the original “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) is
trying to get his hands on, but that’s only an excuse to send Cruise and his
team into action to stop him with all the stunts and pyrotechnics Hollywood can
muster.
Bird proves he knows his spy
flick necessities from nearly the opening shot of the movie. He gives us the
sweeping in from above shot of Budapest. The score by Michael Giacchino
(“Lost”) is like something out of the early 60s. We see a man, clearly on a
mission, escaping from bad guys by jumping out a window, twisting and shooting
back at the camera. He encounters a mysterious woman in an alley, who appears
to be his contact, but his phone notifies him something is wrong. Too late, she’s
not who he thought.
There are several big
special effects and action sequences. Early on the screenwriters Josh Applebaum
and André Nemec (both from producer J.J. Abrams’ “Alias” television series)
play to the audience’s expectation in a big event picture by blowing up half of
the Kremlin in a sequence right out to the disaster of the week catalogue.
There’s Cruise’s big stunt sequence where he scales the outside of the world’s
tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai. He careens about the outside of
the spires’ highest floors inciting awe from the audience and cringes from the
film’s insurance company. A stunning foot and car chase through a sand storm
quickly follows this sequence. Bird’s direction here and Paul Hirsch’s editing
is nothing short of brilliant as they somehow film in a brown out and keep the
action understandable and riveting.
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