Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is assigned to track down and stop a ruthless Russian scientist who's decided it's time for a global housecleaning. The wackjob in question wants to start a nuclear war in order that the world might come back stronger in it's aftermath. While infiltrating the Russian state archives in search of vital information Hunt is framed for blowing up the Kremlin and spends much of his subsequent time avoiding arrest by the bumbling Moscow police. He chases the rogue Rooskie scientist from Moscow to Dubai (where we get a pretty spectacular sequence on the outside of the Burj Kalifa) and from Dubai to Mumbai while the countdown ticks down to worldwide obliteration.
That's the basic premise of the newest installment in the Mission Impossible series. It's strengths are the strengths of any decent modern action movie: high production values, fantasy tech, well modulated action sequences, exotic locales and Bond girls, or Bond-type girls. It's weaknesses are the weaknesses of many a modern action movie: poorly crafted characters and extreme implausibility. Because of a surplus of the latter Ghost Protocol never really got off the ground for me and belongs more in the company of recent eye-rollers like "Columbiana" than alongside what I am increasingly coming to believe is the gold standard for 21st century actioners: Martin Campbell's "Casino Royale".
That movie proved once and for all that you can tell an implausible tale in a way that almost seems plausible and thereby allow the audience to relate to (and by extension care about) the characters. Achieving that plausability is a matter of knowing when to let up on the miracles and when to pull one out of the hat. Campbell understood this. Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird seems to have missed the memo. If Campbell's Bond didn't have this or that invaluable piece of tech handy he simply broke down the door and beat the crap out of whoever was on the other side. Not the MI team. Even when they're disavowed and the entire MI program shut down they still don't have to improvise, they just access a completely tripped out rail car in the middle of Moscow loaded with everything they'd ever need to do anything. Maybe I was the only one in the theater who groaned when this happened, I couldn't tell because my groan was so loud it drowned out just about everything else.
It's because of this kind of bullying of my suspension of disbelief that I was never able to invest in either the story or the characters. I just knew that when the chips were down they were never really down. Just wait a second and somebody will pull something no one has ever concieved of before, some situation-specific super tech, out of a briefcase and all will be well.
So I sat through the movie enjoying my popcorn a lot more than the story, appreciating the quality of the cinematography, appreciating that Jeremy Renner has a presence Tom Cruise can only dream of and trying to concentrate on the technical wherewithal required to pull off a scene like that which occurs on the exterior of the Burj, though I really didn't care one way or the other if Ethan Hunt plunged to the ground.
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