Bird, Cruise Achieve Impossible with Ghost Protocol
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is, in a word, awesome. Better than that, it is the first film in Tom Cruise’s TV-to-feature series that I have enjoyed start to finish, beginning to end and for every single moment of its two hour-plus running time. With efforts directed by the likes of Brian DePalma, John Woo and J.J. Abrams this one helmed by The Iron Giant and The Incredibles director Brad Bird is easily the best of the bunch, and to say it left me breathless would be selling the finished product exceedingly short.
Tom Cruise goes to new heights in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
© Paramount Pictures
Yeah, I’m kind of shocked about that, too. Listen, while I’ve enjoyed facets of all three of the Mission: Impossible adventures, I’ve always been quite upfront about how much their lazy plotting and herky-jerky scripts left me wanting for more. All of them have moments of wonderment and awe, and each feature set pieces that blow your socks off, but none have scripts designed to keep the viewer interested for long periods of time, and for all their strengths each has just as many faults to sadly contemplate at the very same time.
Not Ghost Protocol. Without question the silliest of the series, nonetheless writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec keep things remarkably focused and never lose sight of the narrative’s ultimate endgame. They know where they’re taking things, know the path put-upon Impossible Mission Force (IMF) hero Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has to tread, the screenwriters making every step of the journey a borderline incredible one that’s as giddily mesmerizing as it lump-in-throat astonishing.
The basic plot concerns a Russian bad guy named Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) who manages to implicate Ethan and his team in the bombing of the Kremlin, stealing top secret nuclear launch codes in the process. You see, he’s an old school hard-line communist from the old day who believes the only way humanity can be purified is through the fire of atomic Armageddon, and he’s intent on starting a limited war between the U.S. and Russia to prove his point.
When the entire IMF is disavowed by the American government, Ethan, revenge seeking agent Jane Carter (Paula Patton), tech genius Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and government ‘analyst’ William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) discover they’re the only ones capable of stopping this madman’s plot. To do it, they’ll have to work as a team, put interpersonal secrets aside and travel the globe to discover, and hopefully put an end to, Hendricks’ machination, all the way being chased by a dogged Russian agent (Vladimir Mashkov) intent on their capture.
Silly, yes, but also straightforward, free of fat and exceedingly simple, all of which are very good things indeed. Appelbaum and Nemec keep things moving fast and furious, their script a model of restraint that knows how to flesh out its characters and uses action as a way to develop story and not as just residual fodder to pad out the running time. Former writers for J.J. Abrams’ “Alias” (who returns to produce and oversee this fourth installment, not coincidentally), it’s clear these guys have learned some pretty solid lessons as far as spy-vs.-spy action filmmaking is concerned. Whether we’re in Moscow, Dubai or Seattle, focus is always maintained, and for that I give them humongous props because it’s a feat not a single previous Mission: Impossible flick can also proclaim.
But the real star here isn’t Cruise, isn’t Renner, isn’t the sterling supporting cast inhabiting their respective stock character rolls to perfection, it instead director Bird seamlessly making the transition from animation to live action with remarkable aplomb. Filming portions of this epic in mind-blowing IMAX, featuring stunt work the likes no other picture this year can equal, the excitement generated by this sequel comes perilously close to bursting right through the roof of the theatre. This is edge-of-your-seat stuff, Bird orchestrating it all as if he’d been doing this thing for decades. He shows a remarkable acumen for this type of genre filmmaking, mixing old school retro James Bond style with twenty-first century theatrics to produce something that feels exhilarating and fresh. The Mumbai sequence alone is worth the price of an IMAX admission, and to say things don’t stop but only get better from there is about as pleasant a statement as any I’ve made in quite some time.
Who knows if this series will continue, as maybe some of the naysayers are right and Cruise’s days as an IMF action hero are behind him. But my money isn’t just that there will be more Mission: Impossible adventures, but that the still-powerful Hollywood superstar will likely be right out there till fronting them. Ghost Protocol is the best Hollywood produced action film of 21011, and if you’d asked me if I thought the chances of that was unlikely beforehand I wouldn’t have just said that I’d agree with you, but that they were downright impossible.
Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4)
