Review: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

It's been a while since the IMF hit our screens (and by IMF, I mean Tom Cruise, as the rest of the team don't get much of a look in these days), and for some that's been a blessed relief. Whilst the first film pissed all over the television series that spawned it, like the Resident Evil films, it was still a good movie - just a poor Mission: Impossible movie. M:I-2, however, couldn't be said to be of quite the same standard, and though John Woo's style shone through every frame, and Hans Zimmer provided an incredible soundtrack (mostly plagarised from Gladiator), the best thing that can be said about M:I-2 is that it is the sole reason Hugh Jackman ended up getting the part of Wolverine (overshooting meaning that Dougray Scott was forced to stick with the mission). The best thing that can be said about Mission: Impossible 3 is that Simon Pegg was in it. Other than that it was a huge pile of turd.

Of course, by this stage, Tom Cruise was revealing just how completely fucking insane he truly is, and fingers were crossed that he had given up on the while Mission: Impossible idea (fans of the series, however, had been crossing their fingers long before this). However, six years later, and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol launches onto our screen amidst a flurry of rumours that Tom Cruise would be handing over to the increasingly popular Jeremy Renner (who is apparently fronting the new Bourne movies, as well as joining The Avengers). With the beautiful Paula Patton and ever reliable Simon Pegg on cast, a modicum of interest started to flare up, helped no end by Brad Bird being announced as the director. Bird has had an interesting journey getting to this point, directly mostly animated movies up until now, but he his style with films such as The Iron Giant and the superb The Incredibles indicated that Bird could be an inspired choice for director.

And, in truth, he is. Bird brings much of his vision from The Incredibles, along with composer Michael Galacchio, onto the film, and his style is clearly in the action sequences which are handled extraordinarily well. In truth, however, one gets the feeling that both Bird and Galacchio would have preferred to be making a James Bond film, as more often than not, there is an attempt to bring a Bondian flare to the movie. Galacchio's score is very much in the same style, and every so often you think to yourself that he would prefer to have been using Monty Norman's theme, rather than Lalo Schiffin's. But none of this detracts from the film in anyway, and in some cases adds to it, more than just a little.

The action sequences are the true stars of the film, particularly the extraordinarily tense scene of Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt making his way up the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Filmed for real, and with Cruise doing a lot of the work, it is easily the best scene in the entire film. For the rest of the film, the action is great, though the climactic fight is mostly nonsensical, and not helped by the movie's greatest failing. More on that soon.

Tom Cruise maybe nuttier than squirrel shit, but he's still a fairly solid actor, and the fact he is starting to look a little older, actually adds to the character of Ethan Hunt a great deal. However, his supporting cast completely blows him out of the water. It's almost impossible to take your eyes of the statuesque Paula Patton, and her fight with assassin Sabine (Lea Seydoux) is great fun, with a brilliant ending (though they missed a trick by not having Sabine's body land near Hunt as he makes his chase). Simon Pegg is again mostly comic relief, but he does get a little more action than last time. Ultimately though, he's playing the standard "Simon Pegg" character, which is great, but nothing eventful. Jeremy Renner, on the other hand, is very eventful. I've often seen him as the poor man's Daniel Craig, but he gets some great moments in the film, and often the film is split into Tom Cruise moments, and Renner/Patton/Pegg moments, the latter of which are much more fun than the former. The television series worked as an ensemble programme, and the movies generally work best in the same manner (you listening, Tom?), so that seeing the team in action is really good fun.

All that said, however, there doesn't seem to be any indication that Cruise is planning on leaving the series in a hurry, and while I would have no problem with Renner taking over as the lead full time, I don't really have a problem if we got to see the Cruise/Renner/Patton/Pegg team in the next film. That said, it would be nice to see a consistent team in these movies, rather than just randomly getting team members whenever the series feels like it. Again, movie series in general these days, make more of an effort to get a regular cast, and the Mission: Impossible films would do well to stick to this as well.

They would also do well to find a better story and screen writer, because the one thing that grossly lets down this film is a script that goes from average, to spectacularly stupid. There are some nice ideas in the film, but not a lot of them really string together very coherently, and there are plot holes in the movie so big, one of Dubai's infamous sandstorms could fly through it without making much of a dent. For instance, when the Kremlin is bombed, given that the nuclear codes were in the building and were specifically in the area that was bombed, regardless of whether you thought they were stolen or not, wouldn't you change them, just based on the fact that someone was able to sneak into that room and plant a bomb there?

"Someone got into the room where we keep the top secret nuclear codes and planted a bomb!"
"Did they take the codes?"
"We're not sure...they exploded the bomb."
"Ah, should be all right then."
"You did hear me say 'we're not sure', didn't you?"

Equally, by the end, the movie just gets sillier and sillier, climaxing in the aforementioned scene where Ethan Hunt goes on the chase for the villainous Michael Nyqvist's Kurt Hendricks. Quite aside from the fact that Nyqvist never quite sells as a villain, and how a middle aged, slightly overweight man is able to outrun a trained IMF agent aside, the fight as they try to get hold of the suitcase holding the destruct sequence for the nuclear missiles is just purely ridiculous. There are other things in the movie that Brad Bird should probably have paid a little more attention to (quite why, as Ethan Hunt flees a sandstorm, the people around him are running towards it, would be one of my top five), but they are nitpicking little things. That said, let me give a little bit more of a nitpick and say that Ving Rhames and Michelle Monaghan's cameos in the movie are completely stupid. Rhames' couldn't be anymore gratuitious, and Monaghan's not only makes Jeremy Renner's character look pretty crap as an agent, but also begs the question why Ethan Hunt married her in the first place, if his plan was to shut her out of his life on their honeymoon.

If Tom Cruise doesn't return, I can't help feeling that the climax should have seen Ethan Hunt die in his fight with Hendricks. Quite aside from the fact it would have been one hell of an ending, and a real climax (Hunt and Hendricks locked in battle to the death), it would have given a lot more gravitas to Rhames and Monaghan's cameos if they were at Hunt's funeral.

Ultimately, though, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is an entertaining action flick which works best if you just switch off and let it happen. The moment you start to think about it, is the moment you will start to wonder how many monkeys wrote the script, and that's not a good thing for any movie.