Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is director Brad Bird\u2019s (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) first live-action movie, and it shows.\u00a0 As much critical praise as this movie\u2019s been getting, it has a lot of flaws and was, at times, difficult to watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the fourth film in the series, and none of the sequels have matched the first on any level (with the possible exception of the villain in the third movie, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman).\u00a0 The first Mission: Impossible was twisty, suspenseful, and action-packed.\u00a0 Tom Cruise was in his prime, and the movie still holds up to this day.\u00a0 John Woo directed the sequel, which is by far the worst installment in the series.\u00a0 JJ Abrams then rescued the series with M:I III, actually coming pretty close to matching the quality of the first one.<\/p>\n
The latest installment is somewhere between the second and third movies.\u00a0 Not terrible like the second one, but not as fun as the third.\u00a0 Part of the problem is that Cruise has aged and his public appearances in the last few years have made it difficult to take him seriously as an action hero anymore.\u00a0 Thankfully the younger and grittier Jeremy Renner (best know from his star-making role in The Hurt Locker) is there to balance things out.\u00a0 He is the best part of the movie, by far, hitting all the right marks.\u00a0 The high-point of the film involves him jumping down a large shaft in a metal suit, only to be \u2018caught\u2019 by magnets inches from hitting the bottom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Everyone\u2019s talking about a scene where Cruise\u2019s Ethan Hunt scales the tallest skyscraper on the world using sticky gloves, but it\u2019s not all it\u2019s cracked up to be.\u00a0 This is where Brad Bird could have done much better.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s all the hype, but I felt like this scene could have been so much more suspenseful.\u00a0 I was underwhelmed by it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another issue is that we never get to know the villain.\u00a0 He just kind of shows up here and there, and we only hear him speak a couple lines.\u00a0 It would have been nice to have learned more about him, seen more of him, etc\u2026 It was the villain that made M:I III so good, and was noticeably missing here.<\/p>\n
Also, I really didn\u2019t care what happened to the team, and I was never in suspense about whether they would complete their \u2018mission.\u2019\u00a0 The movie just moves from one action set-piece to the next, with no build-up.\u00a0 Despite all the huge buildings, cool gadgets, and fast cars, I was actually bored at times, waiting for something suspenseful or scary to happen.\u00a0 Bird spends so much time on making the movie big, exciting, and beautiful that he forgets what makes a movie truly interesting: the suspense.\u00a0 In the first movie Ethan Hunt famously breaks into CIA headquarters and is suspended by a rope as he is slowly lowered into a high-security computer terminal.\u00a0 It\u2019s quiet, slow, understated, and subtle, yet completely suspenseful throughout.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t have hurt if Bird had exercised a bit more subtlety here.<\/p>\n
The verdict:\u00a0 Despite all its flaws, it\u2019s not a bad movie.\u00a0 It has some really fun sequences, it works well overall, and has a pretty good cast (particularly Renner and Simon Pegg as Benji).\u00a0 Most people I\u2019ve talked to really liked it, so I\u2019m probably in the minority on this one.\u00a0 If you\u2019re looking for a good movie to see this holiday season, I think Sherlock Holmes is the better option.<\/p>\n
Notes:
\n\u00a0– \u00a0Cruise seems to constantly find himself without a shirt, and is always able to find what appears to be the same leather jacket in every dumpster or house that he runs by.\u00a0 Is it supposed to be like Indy\u2019s hat?\ufffd
\n\u00a0– \u00a0Josh Holloway (played Sawyer on TV\u2019s lost) was only given a few minutes of screen time.\u00a0 I was hoping he\u2019d have a bigger role.<\/p>\n
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