Tom Cruise is back at it in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. It’s a good solid action movie. With a bit of bad.
The good: It’s well paced and fun with shiny set pieces, solid effects, and just enough high-end globetrotting. (See it in IMAX to truly appreciate the stunning Burj Khalifa scenes.) The cast is surprisingly strong, and the characters’ backstories — though slow-dipped in hokey hero paste — add a nice human element. (What’s hokey hero paste, you ask? You know, unassailable notions of self-reliance in family defense, macho posturing, lots of glances laced with steely respect for hard-won martial arts skills. Stuff like that. Go easy, I’m writing in an airport.)
The bad: It feels very dated. (Cold War? Russian nuclear missiles? Really?) It butchers that same subject matter, bungling several pretty basic elements of how nuclear warheads are delivered. Worse, M:I4 also butchers its own premise. “Ghost Protocol,” we’re told. The team is cut off, disavowed, on their own. Great! So, no high tech backup or deus ex machina unmaskings, right? Wrong. Despite paying lip service to the idea that the team is alone and unsupported, and despite some malfunctioning gear, in practice the film plays out more or less the same as the others. Cruise et al. conveniently inherit a boxcar stuffed with gadgetry, and seem to have no problem jetting around the world on a moment’s notice despite apparently being flagged as terrorists. Opinions will differ here, but I found the team’s plan of attack in this film to be just as outrageous and tech-dependent as — and indistinguishable from — the nonsense plots of the others. “Ghost Protocol” or not, apart from some temperamental gear and whining from the cast, the action here plays as a typical M:I film.
But this doesn’t much matter, because M:I4 delivers a strong action picture that’s readily the best of the franchise. Sure, it’s a bit dumb, but the cast is fun to watch — especially villain Michael Nyqvist, who played Mikael Blomkvist in the original Swedish Dragon Tattoo series. (Still more impressive is the fact that in writing this, my first-pass guess at the name and spelling of “Mikael Blomkvist” was actually correct.) Cruise is getting a little old for all this, but as a pedigreed James Bond fan I can’t really complain about ancient dudes playing action spy.
I broke my usual rule and checked the Rotten Tomatoes ratings before seeing this film — it’s running an incredibly high score there. Let’s not go overboard, people. It’s not that good. It’s not crazy good. It’s not even super good. It’s pretty good. (It’s not bad, mind you, and there’s the explanation for that astronomical RT score — hardly anyone is going to give this film a thumbs down, and in RT-speak even a hundred unenthusiastic, shrug-and-eh thumbs-ups equate to a strong positive score.)
But Cruise’s latest is better than a shrug-and-eh. As action films go, M:I4 has it all: Great visuals, planes, cars, spy gear, everything shiny. Enjoy.
HAUS VERDICT: Overcomes its somewhat misleading “Ghost Protocol” aspect and hokey backstories to deliver a strong, tight, classic action ride.
The best? really? That’s a strong endorsement.