Review of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, starring Tom Cruise.
If you liked the first three movies in the series, it’s impossible not to like the new Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
It has everything the others had – elaborate action scenes, big fights, breathtaking stunts – and Tom Cruise running as fast as he can.
The guy likes to run, and he’s run away from us the last few years following some poorly received and poorly planned public appearances. Oh, he’s shown up since jumping on Oprah’s couch and facing off with Matt Lauer, but his best received role was as the foul-mouthed movie exec in Tropic Thunder, and he was buried under tons of makeup. Otherwise, well, do you even remember Valkyrie or Knight And Day?
So Tom Cruise is back, as the Tom Cruise we all liked way back when. The movie is literally a Tom Cruise Production starring Tom Cruise wearing sunglasses, Tom Cruise smiling at the camera, Tom Cruise being intense, Tom Cruise running fast and Tom Cruise doing a lot of his own stunts. Like in the Mission: ImpossibleTV series there is a Mission: Impossible Team, but like in the other movies, they’re only there to support Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt.
It would be annoying if Cruise wasn’t so good at it. The movie is just fun – one of our biggest movie stars is giving us big-time escapist fun. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol never lets up – Ethan commands “light the fuse” during the opening Russian prison break/riot, the familiar theme booms loudly and we’re off. Soon, Ethan and his team are patsies for the demolition of the Kremlin, and the government invokes “Ghost Protocol” – it disavows their existence while secretly hoping they can bring the true perpetrators to justice, You’d think without their resources, this would be a more bare-bones Mission: Impossible. But no, they still find a way to introduce outlandish gadgets that are as inventive as anything in a sci-fi movie. A camera in a contact lens that prints copies when you blink may stretch credibility, but these movies aren’t about getting real. If they were about reality, we wouldn’t buy into the stunts that are the centerpiece of each movie. This time, it’s Ethan scaling the Burj Khalifa in Dubai– the tallest building in the world. The scene is as incredible looking as anything director Brad Bird did in The Incredibles (no pun intended) or Ratatouille – making it all the more impressive that this film is his live action directing debut.
There are people other than Cruise in this movie – The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner is on the IMF team and is right now being primed as our next action hero. He’s got parts coming in the Marvel Comics’ Avengers movie and the next Bourne film, and he shows a little of what he’s got here. But with Tom Cruise around, it’s only a little.
If this movie is a “coming out” for anybody, it’s Paula Patton as another member of the team. Patton is maybe best known as that pretty teacher in Precious, and she’s had some other roles since then as, well, the pretty girl. Maybe it’s not great acting in Ghost Protocol, but she gets to be a presence: a full-out ass-kicking action movie babe.
One thing these movies have lacked – and still do – is a memorable villain. Aside from some scenery-chewing stuff from Philip Seymour Hoffman in Mission: Impossible III, this critic is hard-pressed to name an M:I villain – even hours after seeing the latest one. But we’ve got a good action hero, and for these missions, that’s all we need anyway.