Should You Choose

Conditions: Gusty


Film Review: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.

Director Brad Bird steps into the big chair for the latest installment of the adventures of super spy Ethan Hunt. Having proved he has a flair for action movies with The Incredibles, Brad takes a similar stylish brush to Cruise's super hero franchise. More flair and a bit more humanity from the characters are a welcome influence on proceedings. Brad talked recently of how he wanted to have honest character reactions to the things that are happening, and that part really comes across well. However I feel that in this latest installment there's something that's gone missing. The plot revolves around a fanatical nuclear scientist who believes that what the human race needs is world war three, because in order to make humans stronger you have to first kill off most of the population. So he sets up the Impossible Mission team to take the blame for bombing the Kremlin, in order to steal Russian launch codes so he can fire a retaliatory missile at America.

Cruise and co, now disavowed and on the run from everybody, have to try to intercept the codes but, oddly and for no real reason worth 6 billion lives, are forced to essentially give them to the madman instead - and so the second part of the film involves chasing after the bad guy in order to try and stop him from launching a missile. As plots go it's about par for the course, but I have to say it really feels like a lot of the film is merely setup for various action sequences. I realise a lot of action movies are precisely that, but this one felt a lot more obvious about it. One of the things never addressed in these kinds of films is what happened to the romantic interest from the last film. However, this time around Michelle Monaghan's wife character from M:I 3 does actually get discussed.

And this is where the movie stumbles. Not explaining anything for the first half of the film, including why Ethan is stuck in a Russian prison, we're left to guess as to what must have happened between the films. Finally we're clued in and it looks as if the happy ending of MI:3 was not so happy after all, and Ethan Hunt is supposedly bitter and wanting vengeance: a theme of the movie as another character is also seeking vengeance. But then at the end we find out it was just a trick, which I think really upsets the whole film. For a start, it turns out that without any romantic interest at all a Mission Impossible film is actually kind of a lifeless animal, despite the stunts. And secondly, messing about with the characters like that ends up confusing the audience as to what anyone is fighting for. I think the nuts and bolts of the film are fine, but there's not really any heart in it, despite all the style. Two busted gadgets out of Five.


- Peace out