Saturday, December 24, 2011

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) Review


Just when you thought Tom Cruise was done in Hollywood he comes back with a movie so exciting, so exhilarating and ultimately so much fun that you are happy about his return. This movie is "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" and not to give anything away but it is a great popcorn flick.

The "Mission Impossible" franchise had its fair share of ups and downs over the last 15 years. The first entry in 1996 was a box office smash that, together with "Goldeneye" the year before, managed to revive the spy genre. Then the inevitable sequel in 2000 uped the ante and thanks to director John Woo replaced the twisty plot of the original with a lot of ridiculous over the top action sequences. For better or worse (I didn't like the second one at all) this film grossed even more than the first one and so another sequel was a necessity. Unfortunately there were personalities clashing behind the scenes, directors and writers were constantly replaced so there wasn't another "Mission Impossible" until 2006. The third entry directed by J.J. Abrams tried to shake things up by adding a whole bunch of new characters and gave main character Ethan Hunt not just a love interest but a fiancee. While definitely a step up from the second one, "M:I III" didn't match the box office success of its predecessors.

And here we are now in December 2011 and we finally have a fourth installment in the series and again, we have a new director at the helm. Enter Brad Bird who started out directing episodes of "The Simpsons" back in the 90s and the underrated kiddie flick "The Iron Giant" before he made the Pixar hits "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille". It's great to see how well he handles the jump from his animated flicks to big scale action movies, his back-to-the-roots approach is successful by keeping the pace up and dropping most of the ludicrous character drama from the third entry.

Instead we get breathtaking action set pieces (especially the Dubai sequence is incredibly awesome), side characters that work in the context of the film and Tom Cruise back at his personal best after his questionable last action movie "Knight and Day". If you want to watch only one movie in theaters this Christmas, this film should leave you quite satisfied.

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